


Bring Me to Life

by WingsUnbound



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Castiel/Top Dean Winchester, Destiel - Freeform, First Time, Fix-It, Friends With Benefits, Homophobia, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, Light BDSM, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Romance, Sam Winchester Knows, Slow Burn, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:48:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 81,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28772601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingsUnbound/pseuds/WingsUnbound
Summary: Following on from the events in the last episode of Season 15, the beer in Heaven is shit, the weather is iffy and Dean is avoiding all thought of Cas. The past can't be forgotten though, so when Cas finds Dean and begs for the opportunity to fix what happened, how can he resist?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 143
Kudos: 263





	1. Angel With a Shotgun

The sky was shining the kind of bright blue that made you think of summer holidays, lazy days and ice creams. It was the perfect colour to go with the perfect temperature - just hot enough that Dean had an excuse to wind down his window and hang his arm out, his fingers tapping along with the music against the outside of the car door. He knew he looked like a poser when he did this, but this was Heaven and he was damn well going to do whatever made him happy.

Dean had picked up Sam around twenty minutes earlier by his count, but he had worked out by now that time wasn't linear or consistent here. They could have been driving for twenty minutes or twenty years and they wouldn't know, and Dean wasn't sure he liked it. He'd tried to explain it to Sam, but Sam had been so excited to see him and tell him about his wife and kid that he had barely taken a breath since he'd sat down. Sam hadn't had verbal diarrhoea this bad since he was a little kid, and Dean was made up to hear him so happy. 

“... and after she turned me down for the third time, I told her that it was up to her to propose when she was ready, and I expected her to make me feel like a princess! Do you know how she proposed? I was standing there, covered in what could only be described as Demon vomit, and Eileen dropped to one knee, right there in the middle of the warehouse.”

"Sounds like you've had a really great life," Dean said with a genuine smile, when his brother finally took a breath. "I'm so happy for you, man. You deserve it more than anyone - a real family, a proper job, peace." 

A cloud of sadness crossed Sam's face, taking away his gentle smile and replacing it with a wrinkled brow. Dean frowned. His baby brother was meant to have had a good life - if something had happened to screw that up, he was going to find a way to break out of Heaven, then he was going to go down and whoop some ass. 

"Yeah. Well, it wasn't all plain sailing. We really wanted Dean to be able to grow up with a brother or sister, but Eileen was hurt on the way to visit Garth one Christmas. Piece of wood, right through her abdomen and she was eight months pregnant with Dean at the time. The doctors, they saved her and saved the baby, but… no more babies. That was when we agreed that our role at the bunker would be more organisational and less hands on. We didn't want Dean growing up, well, like we did."

“Yeah, it’s no life for a kid,” Dean agreed softly. “That sounds really rough, Sammy.” 

"We were going to adopt. Waited two years, then we were weeks away from getting this beautiful baby girl, when it all fell through. I mean we were happy, but it always felt like something was missing, you know?"

Dean nodded. "I get that." It only felt like it had been a few months since they had defeated Chuck, but that 'lonely, something is missing' feeling had been with him every single day since. 

Dean knew life wouldn't be all plain sailing for anyone, but it still hurt to know that Sam had suffered and he hadn't been there to get his little brother through it. He took in Sam’s furrowed eyebrows and shook his head. First day in Heaven and he was making it such a downer for Sam, melancholy bastard that he was. 

"Dean sounds like a great kid though. And how wouldn't he be with such an awesome name?" Dean's cheery tone was forced, but he was genuinely touched by Sam’s gesture.

"Yeah," smiled Sam, remembering his son with a pang of sadness. How long would it be until he saw his face again? Eileen’s face? _Hopefully a long, long time_ , he told himself, shaking off the melancholy feelings with a physical shake of his head. 

"Do you know how weird it was having Garth's kids over for a playdate and seeing Sam, Cas and Dean running about together? Even now they're both grown up Cas properly takes care of Dean - always has, just like his namesake." 

Dean swallowed a lump that had risen in his throat. That sinking feeling was back, the one that made him feel like there were heavy stones in the pit of his stomach. It hit him every time he thought about how Cas was here in Heaven, but how he didn't give enough of a damn to come and see him. He’d considered praying to Cas, prompting him - but what was the point? It hadn't worked when he was on Earth. Cas was busy, important, and for the first time Dean truly understood that Cas was a completely different species to him - a much more important one. He’d been playing make-believe for far too long.

"That's adorable. I always knew you'd be an awesome dad." Dean wasn't blowing smoke up his ass - Sam had always been good at anything he tried his hand at, but he was made to be a husband and father - protective, kind, took just the right amount of shit before getting ratty. He'd been practicing on Dean, keeping him in line and out of real trouble for years. 

"Yeah." Sam tried not to think of whether Dean would have been a good dad or not. There was no point now, was there? He would have been an awesome hands-on uncle though, he decided. Sam had imagined him there so often over the years that he could actually picture them playing together - - playing ball, teaching his nephew to drive, talking to him about girls. In Sam's head, his brother had been there with them every day. 

"Did you go back to law school?" Dean asked, filling the suddenly melancholy silence.

"Yeah. I went all big and corporate at first but it made me miserable. I was snappy and down all the time. Eileen was the one who helped me set up my own company and then I got a few of us together and we really helped people. Families who couldn't afford help, kids stuck in the system, people who really needed me. It made up for not being able to hunt anymore.”

“Saving people in a different way,” Dean said, smiling affectionately at Sam. He was always so proud of his brother and it was music to his ears that Sammy had carried on being the same person after Dean had gone. His loving, caring little brother - they were always his best qualities. Not that he couldn’t also occasionally be a not-so-little shit-head.

“You could say that,” Sam smiled. “You’ve not told me about your years here though. I mean, I thought Heaven was meant to be this room with your favourite moment on play for all eternity. It’s how I imagined you - mom, pie, our old kitchen, over and over until I got here and found you. But this… this isn’t it.”

Dean relaxed into his driving, the road stretching out in front of them, music playing on the radio, a light breeze blowing over his skin. The first notes of Angel with a Shotgun came to his ears on the radio and he closed his eyes for a moment before setting his jaw. _No. Absolutely not._ He skipped to the next station.

“I always quite liked that song,” Sam protested.

Dean ignored his brother and pressed the skip button again, even though the first chords of the next song hadn’t even begun. 

“I’ve only been here five minutes,” Dean explained, finally happy with his song choice as Sweet Child of Mine blared from the radio. “I don’t know much more than you do. Bobby was here when I arrived - he said Heaven is different now. Jack pulled all the walls down, and now people live together up here, free instead of being on a crappy little loop for all eternity.”

“Wow. That's amazing. You saw Bobby? Have you seen mom?”

“Not yet, but she lives nearby. They all do - all our people together in little houses dotted about everywhere. I’m honestly not sure how much of an improvement it is. The beer tastes like piss and Dad lives around the corner. I’m not really looking forward to having the conversation with him about how disappointed he is in me for letting vampire mimes end me.”

“ _All_ of our people?” Sam asked hopefully, fixating on one single part of the dialogue with a hopeful look on his face.

Dean had known he was going to go there sooner rather than later. Sam had been pretty heartbroken over losing Cas and when their plans to get him back hadn’t panned out, it had hit Sam a lot harder than Dean had thought it would. It was the lack of peace that had got to him the most - their other loved ones were in Heaven, reliving their happiest days. They had been so sure Cas was in The Empty, experiencing nothing but torment. 

“Everyone,” confirmed Dean, his tone gruff.

“So Cas…?”

For fuck sake. Did he really need to spell it out?

“Apparently.”

“What do you mean, apparently? He’s either in The Empty or he’s here and free, right? I haven’t seen him once over the years, and there have been a few times I’ve prayed to him just in case he could hear me.”

Dean sighed.

“I mean apparently, Sam. I ain't seen him, okay? He’s busy being Jack’s little helper.”

“You come to Heaven, Cas is here and he doesn’t come to meet you? What the hell?” Sam was incredulous and Dean knew how he felt. It was all he’d been thinking about as he’d been driving. 

_Follow the road._

“Yeah, well he’s God’s dad now, ain’t he? Maybe that makes him too big a deal to look in on the hairless apes?”

“Cas isn’t like that. He's our friend. He cares about us! The amount of times he risked his life, gave everything...” Sam was so sure of Cas and Dean wished he had his faith, but he'd learned the hard way that you couldn't rely on anybody. 

“Well I don’t know what to tell you, Sammy,” Dean shrugged, feigning nonchalance. He wasn’t going to pick at that scab - it was already permanently raw and bleeding. “It is what it is.”

“You know you’ve been like this since Cas was taken,” Sam sighed. “Like you don’t really give a crap about anything. I thought that in all this time you'd have stopped acting like nothing could touch you.”

“Sam, this is Heaven. It's meant to be calm and happy and shit. Are you really going to come here and nag at me?”

Sam leaned back in his seat, shaking his head. No, he wasn’t. He’d missed his brother more than he could ever get across to Dean, and now he finally had him here again he wasn’t going to waste their time together arguing. He was opening his mouth to speak, to agree with Dean, change the subject, talk to his brother like he’d been waiting to do for the past forty-nine years, to ask about their dad, Bobby, Ellen, Jo, when a fork of lightning split the rapidly darkening sky directly in front of them.

“What the fuck?” Dean muttered.

The sky, which moments ago had been clear and blue, had gathered thick, ominous black clouds at such a speed that it was like turning day to night, like flicking a light switch. Dean peered up into the semi-darkness, and decided that he really wasn’t sure about Heaven. It was unpredictable, the timeline was just fucked up, and the people who were meant to give a damn about him had turned into dicks who couldn’t care less. Fuck Heaven. This was shit.

A torrent of rain poured from the sky as if someone had just turned a tap. The fat, round drops of water hit the roof of the Impala with a hollow drumming sound, drowning out the purr of the engine. Wide eyed, Dean pulled his arm inside the car and wound up the window, shaking off the drops that had already gathered on his sleeve and started soaking through. 

The sky flashed above them with another fork of lightning, then another. The rain was so heavy that it was bouncing back up off the road they were driving down, so dense it was like a sheet in front of them. Dean could only see a couple of meters in front of him and was now crawling along the road, back in the direction of the bar and Bobby, who could hopefully throw some (literal) light on the situation. 

“Did you do this?” Dean asked suspiciously, eyeing his brother. “You always liked those summer storms when we were kids - were you thinking that it would make our day better if it were pissing down? Is this how it works up here now?”

“How exactly would I do this?” Sam asked, watching his brother flick the lights on so that the twin beams of the Impala’s headlights shone brightly through the torrential rain. “And why would I do it?! I’m not a little kid anymore. I’m 86 years old! I’m past the age where I want to splash in puddles!”

Shaken out of his worry for a moment, Dean turned his head to properly look at his brother. All thought of this storm, Heaven and even The Angel Who Shall Not Be Named was pushed out of his head for one single moment. 

“Eighty-six?” he asked, grinning at the Sam Winchester next to him, who didn’t look a day over 35. “Looking good, Sammy. Oil of Olay working out well for ya.”

Sam rolled his eyes at his brother's amusement and chose to ignore him to gaze wide eyed and worriedly at the world around them instead. The Impala was being pelted with rain so hard that he wondered briefly if it would dent the roof. He definitely didn’t want to try stepping out of the car right now - he’d either drown or have his scalp bruised by the massive raindrops that were landing more like hail on every surface around them. This certainly wasn’t the Heaven he had been expecting and dreaming about.

“It’s like the world is angry,” Sam observed, a little bit in awe. The adrenaline was surging through his body despite the fact that he was almost certain he couldn’t die here. “Really, really angry.”

“Chuck?” suggested Dean through gritted teeth. His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel tightly while the wind whipped and buffeted Baby. The storm around them had got worse far more quickly than any normal earthly storm ever would have and thunder had started, rolling like an angry God in the skies. Dean swallowed hard. The lightning in the air was making the hair on his arms stand up as it crackled around them.

“Definitely not Chuck,” Sam told his brother, raising his voice until he was almost shouting above the sound of the wind and the rain. “He was powerless. We kept an eye on him after he visited us at the bunker not long after you died. A few years later he wrote a book that flopped - An Autobiography of God. I think I might have been the only person to buy it. Then he tried to start a cult, and he was overthrown and kicked out. He died in his 70s and we made sure he was salted and cremated, just in case. This isn’t Chuck.”

A strong gust of wind hit the car like it was a solid, physical object and they skidded sharply to the side. Dean fought for control, pulling the car straight, his teeth gritted as he swore under his breath. Sam gripped the dashboard so hard his fingers hurt. The next gust of wind lifted Baby for several seconds, so that she was running on just two of her wheels.

“We need to pull over,” Sam shouted. “The car is going to flip otherwise. We could shelter under the trees.”

"I'm getting us to Bobby - he'll know what's going on. What's the worst that can happen? The car flips and we die? Again?" Dean glared determinedly out at Heaven as a flying branch hit the windscreen, making him flinch. “Can we even die up here? This is Heaven for fuck sake. I almost prefer zombie-on-a-loop mode.”

"Got to say, I thought Heaven would be more peaceful than this!" Sam shouted over the sound of the wind. "A house, a dog, eternal peace… Sorta thought it would be better." 

“Yeah, join the club,” Dean muttered.Then louder- “Just don’t try the beer.”

The sky lit up brighter than it had with any of the other flashes of lightning, blindingly bright this time. This was less like a lightning strike and more like a billion watt lightbulb had been switched on in a dark room. Every raindrop lit up in the glare of it, shining translucent and dazzling like billions of tiny diamonds all around them, and as they watched, each and every drop of water froze in the air around them, all at once. They were completely and utterly still, frozen in time like someone had pressed the pause button on a film. As the car crawled down the road, the only thing still moving, each frozen sphere of water broke against the windscreen, the effect making it look like thousands of tiny, shining bullets were hitting the glass.

“You’re seeing this, right?” Dean asked, turning to Sam. 

Dean listened. A blanket of silence had descended and it felt like it was enveloping them, eerie in the way it made the world they inhabited seem utterly manufactured. The wind had stopped, like someone had pulled the plug on a fan. The trees that had been waving, shaking, bowing as they were whipped by the gale were now utterly motionless, perfectly still in the now curiously illuminated world. He'd known Heaven was designed, but this made it feel like it was a film set with special effects that had been paused in the middle of filming. 

With a crack loud enough to shake the car with its sheer force, the figure of an angel appeared in the road, directly ahead of them. His wings were spread out behind him, every colour possible shining with a dazzling brightness that made both Sam and Dean want to shield their eyes, but neither of the two men could bring themselves to look away. Dean's foot hit the brake with lightning fast reflexes, but they had no hope of stopping quickly enough on the slippery, wet road. He was going to hit Cas.

"Cas!" Dean yelled, swerving to miss the Angel and losing control of the car as the wheels screeched and skidded, coming off the road and spinning in the dirt. The car came to a sudden stop, which Dean was fairly sure was nothing to do with the brakes he had floored - they should still be moving. 

Dean looked over to Sam to quickly check he was okay. Reassured, he threw open his car door and put his feet to the ground. 

The paralysed drops of rain broke on his body, leaving little wet patches on his clothes and face as he walked, but Dean paid them no mind. His eyes were on Cas, not seeing anything else. Cas. His Angel. His best friend. Not gone, not dead - he was here. 

_Cas who he'd thought he'd never see again, never speak to again, never put his arms around again._

Excitement and hope filled his chest and Dean ran, his feet hitting the road with audible thuds as they landed on the tarmac.

_Cas who hadn't been there to meet him when he'd arrived in Heaven, who hadn't come down to Earth to tell Dean he was alive, that he was free of the Empty, not living an afterlife of eternal torment and misery. Cas who wasn't looking even slightly pleased to see him, wasn't looking like he'd missed him in any way._

His steps faltered and he skidded to a halt, still six feet from the Angel. Dean's hopeful, shining eyes dulled as he forced down the tiny part of himself that he had still allowed to hope. This wasn’t the tearful reunion he’d played in his head every time he couldn’t sleep. He’d imagined this a thousand times - more - the way Cas' face would break into a smile, his eyes crinkling, teeth and gums showing in that way that always had Dean grinning back whether he wanted to or not. Cas' arms would fold around him and he would hold him tightly, whispering words of reassurance until Dean would finally break away to step back and look at his friend, drinking him in after months apart. 

This Cas reminded him much more of the Castiel he had met in the barn that night. Powerful, emotionless - no, that wasn't right. There were waves of emotion coming from the man, _the Angel_ , in front of him - anger. He was furious. 

“Nice of you to drop in, Cas,” Dean called, impressed at the steadiness of his voice, when he was feeling anything but. He'd waited for this moment for so long, and now it was here he was terrified. Was this still _his_ Cas?

Now close enough to see though the drops of rain, Dean could see Cas properly. He still wore the ill-fitting suit and trench coat that was so achingly familiar to him, but with wings spread out behind him Cas reminded Dean of some giant, powerful bird of prey. The colours on each wing seemed to be moving, dancing across the feathers and changing with the light as they trembled. He'd always thought Cas' feathers would be black, and they were, but now he could see more than just their shadow, he could see that they had a multicoloured sheen, like gasoline on the surface of a puddle. The colours danced and swirled over the surfaces of the feathers as they moved. They looked like they would feel velvety soft and Dean wondered if he could get away with stepping closer and reaching out to touch one, or if the angry Angel in front of him would Smite him where he stood. 

As if sensing his thoughts, Cas glared, his glorious wings beating just once, sending a gust of air past Dean that was strong enough to ruffle his hair. Dean was momentarily torn between his hurt, and wanting to excitedly tell Cas how freaking awesome his wings were. 

“Cas?” Sam had caught up to them now and he stood next to his brother, reaching out a calming hand as if he was cautiously approaching a wild animal. 

Cas didn’t even look at Sam, ignoring him completely, his eyes entirely on Dean. Those beautiful, sky-blue eyes were slitted, his jaw was clenched in fury, his shoulders set and high. If Dean had had to draw a picture of what he thought an Avenging Angel would look like, he would have drawn this.

Here, like this, Cas was different and Dean had no idea how to handle it. He wasn't just what you could see, touch and hear - he exuded something more than that, he radiated a feeling that enveloped Dean from head to toe. Power filled the air around him, beating with anger, with sadness, with disappointment and the dull ache of a pain felt for far too long. It was enough to take Dean's breath away. 

When Cas didn’t speak, Dean did what he always did, and filled the silence.

“You’re late, Rainbow Bright,” he said with false bravado that rang hollow even to his own ears. “Did you lose track of time? Sam tells me I’ve been here for half a century. Really thought you might have dropped in for a visit before now.”

"I died for you,” Cas bit out, ignoring Dean's attempt at levity. 

Dean's eyebrows shot up and he spread his hands on a gesture of helplessness. He had to say, he wasn’t really expecting a guilt-trip as their first interaction, but he could roll with that. Anger he knew, understood. Cas needed to get that anger out and Dean more than owed him that.

"Yeah, you did," Dean agreed lightly. “You came for a thank you?”

“A thank you?” Cas snarled, stepping closer to Dean, the feathers on his wings rippling and shining a billion different colours and shades as he moved. It was utterly hypnotic, distracting as hell and honestly the most incredible thing Dean had ever seen. _“A fucking thank you?”_

Cas reached Dean, stopping when only an inch separated their bodies. Those beautiful wings were within touching distance now. Part of Cas, but unfamiliar - Dean felt like he'd got to the last page of a book, only to discover it was part of a trilogy and he was expected not to open the next book. He was so achingly familiar, but here, like this, he was also something new, something powerful and dangerous. 

"Potty mouth, Cas. We're in Heaven, don't you know?" His tone was cavalier, but the feelings bubbling in his chest were anything but. His heart thudded hard and fast, his mouth dry, his hands were clenched into fists to keep them from reaching out. Cas - his Cas. He was here. _Finally._

“I have never asked for your thanks,” Cas growled. “Never! All I ever asked in return for my sacrifice was that you lived! A vampire fight and a rusty nail? Really?”

“It was hardly a rusty nail,” Dean argued, immediately affronted. That so called rusty nail had fucking hurt as it pierced his lung, arguably hurting him almost as much as coming to Heaven to discover Cas was not only free from the Empty, but he had been too busy to even drop in and let him know. Anger and indignation rose up in him. "Screw you, Cas." 

“You can't blame him,” Sam said, leaping to Dean's defence, dragging his eyes away from Cas' shimmering wings to his furious face. “It was an accident.”

“An accident?” Cas asked, finally glancing for a moment at Sam, disbelief and sarcasm dripping from his voice. “I watched you, Dean. Watched you for weeks hoping I was wrong - _was_ it an accident?”

Dean’s cheeks burned as shame filled his chest. He swallowed hard and turned his head to look away from Cas’ piercing blue eyes that right in that moment seemed to be looking into his very soul. He couldn’t lie to him, not like this, not after everything they’d been through together, everything that had been said. Guilt and anguish were written on his face and in his body language as he hung his head, not able to hold Cas’ accusing stare.

“Dean,” Sam said, dawning horror spreading overtaking his features, horror and recrimination evident in his voice. “You… you meant to die? You meant to leave me?”

“No!” Dean denied, turning away from Cas to look at his brother, colour draining from his face as he took in the disappointment on Sam's face. “No, Sammy. I didn’t mean to! I…”

“You were reckless!” Cas interrupted, pulling Dean's attention back to him. He reached for Dean, his hands closing on his shoulders, gripping him tightly enough to make the Hunter wince as the strong fingers dug into muscle. Cas was demanding Dean’s attention and Dean didn’t even try to pull away. Just feeling his hands on him, the heat of them through Dean’s shirt, it proved Cas was real, that Dean wasn’t dreaming this. He didn’t care if he had ten finger shaped bruises on his shoulder in the morning, as long as it proved to him that this was really happening.

“Reckless and idiotic! You looked for every dangerous monster and demon you could find, treading in your father’s footsteps, and you threw yourself into situations with no care for your own safety or Sam’s!”

The crippling guilt that crawled inside him was quelled almost instantly by a surge of indignant anger. Cas could accuse him of many things, but neglecting his brother's safety was not one of those things! 

“I have always protected Sam,” Dean said slowly, quietly, through gritted teeth. He punctuated the sentence with a hard poke at Cas’ chest, like he wasn’t this glorious Celestial, radiating power and electricity to the point where the air was humming around them. “I might not hold my own crappy life in high regard, but I’d do anything to protect my brother.”

Dean glared at Cas, but the flash of anger had abated, replaced by grief as Dean uttered sadly, "I thought you knew me, Cas? I thought we were friends. What happened?" 

Cas’ anger ebbed away, and in its place was more sadness than Dean thought could exist in one place. It was like he was mirroring Dean's emotions, and magnifying them times a thousand. The air seemed to be weighed down with it and just looking at Cas made him ache with sorrow. His wings seemed to droop, some of their brightness fading.

“Dean...” Cas’ tone was pleading now. “Let me fix this? Please let me fix this?”

The hands on Dean’s shoulders were more gentle now, Cas’ thumbs caressing his skin through the material, his eyes beseeching. Dean knew Sam was watching, that he was hurting, had questions of his own, but he couldn’t look away from Cas. This Cas was his Cas, this Cas cared. This was the Cas who had said he’d loved him with a look of rapture on his face, like just allowing the words to fall from his lips was the most incredible thing he’d ever experienced.

"Fix what?" 

“This shouldn’t be all life gives you. Not after all you’ve sacrificed, all you’ve done. You shouldn't be here, Dean. Not yet.” 

"What do you care?" Dean choked out.

Cas’ hands were sliding up Dean’s neck, moving to cup his cheeks, to hold his face gently in both of his hands. Dean wondered if Cas would kiss him, right here, on a road to nowhere with his brother watching, with the world frozen around them. Would Dean let him? Would he kiss him back? Would kissing Cas bring him back to life? 

"You _know_ how much I care," Cas said, his eyes wide and honest, letting Dean see, refusing to keep pretending. Dean's breath caught in his throat.

“Cas…” Dean felt the word leave his lips and dissipate into the air like a prayer. His hands were tangled in the trenchcoat that he’d missed so damn much, because if he wasn’t holding on, he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep standing. His knees were weak, everything was trembling and he didn't know if it was a culmination of finally having Cas in front of him like this, or the terror of being brought back to life, sent back to a world where everything was just so horrifically hard. He wasn't sure he could do this again. 

“Let me?” Cas asked again, his voice barely above a whisper. "Let me put things right."

Cas’ forehead touched his and Dean let himself lean in, increasing the pressure. It felt so good to be this close to Cas again that he could have cried from it. The fresh, familiar scent of him assaulted Dean’s nose, and he breathed deeply - Cas always smelled like the air did after a storm. He’d missed that smell so damn much. Tears pricked at the back of his eyes and he took a shaky breath.

"If I go back, will you be there?" Living wasn’t _living_ without Cas. He couldn’t go through it again without him.

Cas’ eyes softened, and his mouth broke into one of his rare smiles. Dean found himself smiling back. It was going to be okay. Cas would make it okay. 

The flash of lightning in the sky above them flashed at exactly the same moment as the rain started falling again. Dean and Cas broke apart and turned to Sam. All three of them pulled their jackets up to shield their heads from the sudden onslaught.

“Is this you? Are you doing this?” Sam shouted above the wind to Cas.

“It’s Jack!” Cas replied tiredly, warily. 

As if summoned by his name, Jack was standing in front of them, looking no different from the day he left them standing on the street, the day he’d defeated Chuck.

“Jack!” Sam exclaimed warmly, a massive, welcoming smile on his face. “I can’t believe it’s you!”

“Hello Sam. Dean,” Jack greeted with a small smile. As he took a step towards them through the torrent of rain, not a single drop landed on him. "We haven't spoken since you got here - I'm sorry. We will." 

“Hey Jack.” Dean would have been much more pleased to see him if Cas’ face hadn’t darkened the moment Jack had appeared.

Jack turned to Cas, who instinctively reached out for Dean’s hand, holding it in a tight, bruising grip, moving to stand in front of him. Cas was scared for him, was protecting Dean against something Jack might do. Something was very wrong. 

“Castiel. We’ve talked about this.”

“Yes, we have.” Dean had heard that tone before - stubbornness, defiance. Cas wasn't changing his mind. 

“We agreed that you wouldn’t interfere.”

"You _told_ me not to interfere." 

"You know the consequences. Do you really want to lose your position here? You will lose everything." 

Jack might have looked exactly like the boy they had known, but he didn't sound anything like the person Dean remembered. Dean felt a pang for the boy he had once thought of as his own. 

As Jack was speaking, Cas had pulled Dean closer to him and although Dean wasn’t sure what was about to happen, he tensed by his side. 

"Will Sammy be okay?" his words were in an undertone, but Cas heard them and nodded his head almost imperceptibly. 

Cas had stopped shielding himself from the rain and the drops of water were hitting his feathers, pouring down them in a multicoloured cascade, like a rainbow waterfall. Dean watched them, distracting himself, trying not to let the panic in his chest overwhelm him.

"Dean, what is going on?" Sam demanded, and Dean looked at his brother with apologetic eyes.

“Jack…" Cas said - _pleaded_ . "It’s Dean. This is Dean. He's my family. He's _your_ family! You know it isn’t right - he shouldn’t be here, not yet.”

“It’s free will, Castiel. We don't interfere.” The words held no emotion, not hint that Jack was moved by Cas' anguish, that he would back down in the face of his father's desperate pleas. 

“Yes,” Cas ground out. “It is - _My_ free will. _My_ choice to save him.”

"Castiel…" Jack warned, his eyes glowing bright with light and power. “Don't do this.”

"You're my family too," Cas said, his face starting to crumple in a way that pulled at Dean's heartstrings so much he just wanted to pull him into his arms. "But so is Dean. Don't make me choose." 

"I'm your son," Jack said simply, and Dean saw a flash in his eyes that was hard and unmoving. The three year old Nephlim that Dean had worried about handling all this, it seemed that Dean didn't need to have worried, this wasn't the same gentle, awkward kid they'd raised. This wasn't the kid who needed velcro shoes because he couldn't tie laces. This was God, and his word was absolute on this. 

"I'm so sorry, Jack." Cas' words sounded final, broken, full of despair. 

"Dean, I've only just got you back!" Sam pleaded with his brother. 

"You won't lose him at all this way!" Cas didn't have time to reassure Sam, to argue with Jack. The sky was full of flash after flash of lightning, thunder rolling and growling constantly like a warning from an angry dog. A fork of lightning hit a tree that was so close to them Dean could smell the ozone in the air, the acrid smoke as the branches were instantly scorched. Cas turned to Dean urgently. 

"Do you trust me, Dean?" he growled, ignoring Sam, ignoring Jack, ignoring the wind that howled around them, the rain that continued to pour, soaking them to the skin. There was nothing but Dean and the choice he was about to make. 

There was a moment where Dean just looked at him, held his gaze and waited. Then he reached out his free hand and wrapped it around the back of Cas’ neck, holding on. His eyes crinkled at the corners as he smiled at his friend. 

"Always, Cas."

Cas pulled Dean to him, the sudden tightening of his arms around his back made Dean gasp out a puff of air, and Sam watched in horror as both his brother and the angel who loved him glowed brighter and brighter, seeming to absorb all the light around them, burning so brightly that it felt to Sam like trying to look at the sun. When he looked back, they seemed to have burned away.

“Jack? What happened? Where’s Dean?”

“Castiel has fallen,” Jack said shortly, a scowl on his face. “Rebelling once again for Dean Winchester.”

“What?” As Sam spoke, the trees around him blurred and faded, until nothing was left but the wind, the rain and Jack, standing calmly in front of him.

“I don’t understand,” Sam shouted over the noise of the wind. It was getting louder and louder, to the point where it was hurting his ears, stinging his skin as it whipped past.

“Sorry Sam, you’re going back!” Jack said, and then with a click of his fingers, everything faded to black.

  
  



	2. Everybody's Broken

A shiver of apprehension ran through Dean as he eyed the sinister looking barn in front of them. It was undoubtedly a trap - when wasn't it? But he supposed it was as good a way to go out as any. Besides, a few vampire mimes - they'd handled worse than this with their arms literally tied behind their backs. This was nothing. Dean could already practically taste the cold beers he had put in the cool-box on the back seat for later. He and Sam were going to have a few bottles, then maybe find a bar and hustle a few games of pool, just like old times. Maybe he'd do a little flirting, a lot more drinking and see if he could get his brother to get that stick out of his ass and enjoy himself for once. 

Dean eyed his brother as he stood beside him, tense and quite obviously not feeling the same excitement and build-up that Dean was feeling. For Sam, these trips were a necessity to keep his brother safe and Dean knew that, knew how reluctant Sam was to come on hunts these days. He hated that Sam felt obligated to come with him, but what he hated more was how pathetically he needed this in his life, to the point where he was putting his brother at risk. He didn’t want to, but Sam wouldn’t let him go alone and Dean just couldn’t give it up - it was all he had, the only thing that made him feel alive. In this shit world, fighting, drinking and women were all that made him feel good, and he’d rather not admit even to himself that the women part had turned sour a long time ago. 

Life was different for Sam than it was for him, and had been ever since they were kids. Sam had been sheltered in a way that Dean had never been, and while Dean had been honed into a killer, Sam had been indulged, been allowed to grow into someone who had a future outside of this life. Dean sometimes envied that, but could never, ever resent it. His brother truly deserved all the good things he had waiting for him at home - a woman he loved, a future. Hell, even the freaking dog seemed to like him best unless Dean was bribing her with bacon. He knew that Sam had been looking into going back to Law School after he’d seen him hiding the application forms and it had eaten him up inside that Sam felt he’d had to hide that from him. 

One day soon he would let Sam off the hook, he would. He would wait until he knew Sam was settled enough that he wouldn’t come after him, and then he would pack his bags and take off. Hunting alone had its dangers, but he knew that these brotherly bonding trips had an expiry date and he was okay with that. Ticking off cases from his dad's journal felt like he was at least doing something worthwhile. Without these hunts, he was just sitting in the bunker night after night listening to Sam getting lucky, no matter how loudly he played his damn music. If that didn't make you want to go out and stab things, nothing would. 

As they stepped into the barn and the stale smell of old hay permeated Dean’s senses, a sense of deja-vu hit him strongly enough that it made him feel dizzy. Pain, fear and a momentary pang of guilty relief all churned inside him until he had to grit his teeth and swallow it down, shaking his head to clear his mind.  _ Concentrate Winchester _ . There was a time and place for indulging yourself in a freakin' nervous breakdown, and this wasn't it. 

It took seconds for them to find and open the door behind which the two terrified boys were hidden. Dean felt relief flooding through him as they took in their scared, apprehensive, but thankfully _ alive _ faces; but the relief was short lived. At the end of the barn the vampires had lined up, their masks making them far more sinister and intimidating than they would have ever usually been. 

Adrenaline flooded through Dean and he thrilled at the way his heart began beating faster. For that moment the empty feeling that had gripped him ever since Cas had died was taking a backseat to the familiar tension in his muscles, the rush of blood in his veins. He gripped his machete tightly, bracing himself as Sam stepped up beside him and the brothers prepared themselves for the inevitable confrontation. The vampires were edging closer and Dean tensed, ready to fight.

Suddenly without warning, a blinding flash of light filled the barn. Night seemed to turn into day as the air crackled and burned around them. The brothers lifted their arms in unison to shield their eyes from the sudden painful glare and Dean had a moment of literal blind panic as he stumbled and reached out to grip Sam for support. He could hear the fizz of sparks flying around them, but the fact remained that he was unable to see a damn thing in a barn full of enemies. This was not the best start to a fight by any stretch of the imagination. He forced his eyes open the second the light started to fade, and still in a daze blinked at the sight in front of him. 

_ No. That wasn't right. It couldn't be right. _

"Cas?" Dean’s voice trembled, disbelieving. 

Next to him, Sam muttered, "...the fuck?" under his breath. 

The man now standing between the brothers and the vampires was unmistakably  _ him _ , even with his back to them there was no doubt. Trench coat, slightly messy dark hair, same posture, same everything. He was holding himself stiffly, his arms spread, but he was there, he was alive. 

"Tell me that's you, man," Dean said, unable to keep the desperate hope from his voice.

Dean's heart felt like it had risen up to beat in his throat, blocking his airways, choking him. His stomach churned, his face felt hot, skin prickling, the lack of oxygen making him light headed. He'd played this moment in his head over and over again, but he hadn't actually believed it would happen and now it was he was more than a little concerned that he was about to swoon to the ground like some 18th century Lady in a too-tight corset.

With power seeming to pour from him like nothing Dean had ever seen before, Cas dropped heavily to his knees in the centre of the barn, dust rising up in a cloud as he hit the ground hard. Then, his head thrown back, he howled an almost inhuman cry, more like a wounded animal than an angel of the Lord. 

Dean's nerves disappeared like they had never existed in the first place, erased entirely by concern for his friend. Oxygen finally filled his lungs and he took an unsteady step forward, but an arm flew out, barring his way. 

"I wouldn't," Sam said, his brow furrowed, not taking his wary eyes off Cas as he crouched on the ground, now sucking in shuddering breaths of air. 

"Dammit Sam, that's Cas!" 

"And you don't know what brought him back or if he came back okay!" 

Dean heedlessly, impatiently knocked Sam's arm out of the way and started to move towards Cas, but the vampires, who had been momentarily stunned by Cas' sudden appearance, were now edging stealthily towards the temporarily incapacitated angel. Raising the machete, Dean charged at them, ready to put them down for even  _ thinking _ about touching Cas. 

"No!" Cas' head shot up and almost instantly he was on his feet. The air around him was crackling with energy as he moved with unnatural speed to put himself between Dean and the vampires. Dean skidded to a halt in the dirt and watched, paralysed as Cas moved down the line of masked Vampires, his hand landing on each of the bloodsuckers in turn, effortlessly turning them to dust one by one as if they had never existed. 

Dean watched as the dust settled, trying to work out if Cas was  _ his _ Cas, not daring to hope. The last time he'd let himself hope Lucifer had been on his doorstep. Cas could be brainwashed again, he could be Chuck somehow back and wanting to tear out the remains of his soul by appearing as the one thing he'd hoped for the most. This could be an alternate reality Cas or a Cas from the past. Dean had always been a little sore that they'd never got to meet another Cas when his and Sam’s doppelgangers had descended. Maybe the universe was answering his prayers in the shittest of ways? Hell, at this point he could have just succumbed to his own insanity and be imagining this entire thing.

More than anything, he wanted to reach out and touch Cas, to get a firm grip on him in case he was about to blink away again. He couldn’t get his hopes up, couldn’t let his guard down - he knew better than that. He ignored the hammering of his heart and the rising bubble of hope in his chest that proved just how much he was lying to himself.

Seemingly having no such urges, Cas was ignoring the presence of his friends entirely. He stormed angrily past Dean and over to a large bar of metal that was sticking out from a post just behind him. Glowering as if he had a personal vendetta against it, he gripped it in his fist and with a horrific sound of twisting metal and splintering wood, the rebar came free. Thick, rusty screws still protruded from its frame - the large piece of metal looked like it could serve as a pretty formidable weapon. 

"What the fuck are you doing?" Dean asked, eloquent to the last.

Sam joined his brother and in the calm, steady voice he used on jumpy horses, he said, "We're going to need you to put that down, okay?" 

Finally acknowledging they were there, even if it was to look at them both like they were idiots, Cas turned to them. 

"There we go. Put that down now." Sam held his hands up to show Cas he wasn't a threat. "Then we can talk."

When Cas actually rolled his eyes at Sam, Dean could have cried in relief at the  _ Cas  _ in that gesture. The relief was temporary, however, when, using far more strength than Dean remembered him having, Cas threw the piece of metal across the barn. With a splintered crash, the bar hit the wall with far more force than was necessary, making both brothers jump. 

Striding past them on his way to the big wooden door at the entrance, Cas called behind him, "Let's get out of here, before you find another way to get yourself killed."

Dean shot Sam a look as he followed closely behind Cas. There was no way that grumpy asshat wasn't his Angel and he was never letting him out of his sight again.

"Well hello to you too, Cas!" Dean called as they caught up to him.

Cas was leaning on the hood of the car, his head bowed, back and shoulders stiff. In the time they had been inside the barn it had started raining and big, fat drops were falling lazily from the blackness of the night sky above them. Usually Dean loved the rain - the soothing pitter patter, the smell that came from the scorched earth as the water hit it after weeks of arid weather. But tonight it just served to annoy him, attempting to distract him from the only thing he wanted to concentrate on. 

"Hello Dean," Cas said, without looking up from the shiny black paintwork of the car that was reflecting the moonlight. The greeting was so painfully familiar that it made Dean ache just to hear it again. 

"Sam," Cas greeted, somehow sensing that he had appeared too.

“Cas, I can’t believe you’re back,” Sam said, warmth warring with the uncertainty in his voice. He paused for a moment, looking helplessly at Dean. "I've got to go and find those kids. God knows how far they've gone." 

Dean nodded, still not taking his eyes off Cas. There was absolutely no way he was going to be leaving to join the search right now. Sam was good at following trails and two panicked kids would be easier to track than most of what they specialised in finding. His brother would understand him sitting this one out. 

"You good here?" Sam asked, narrowing his eyes at Dean. His hesitation plainly said that Sam didn't trust that Cas was safe to be around right now. Dean had no such reservations. 

"Yeah," Dean nodded, wondering if Sam had any idea how messed up he was feeling. He'd thought he'd dealt with the pain he'd been feeling since he lost Cas. He'd swallowed it down, buried it. Sam had tried to talk to him about it a few times, but Dean had always shut the conversation down. The kid was oddly perceptive though, and there was no way he was missing the volatile mix of emotions swirling around in Dean's head right now. 

"I'll be back as soon as I can." Sam dutifully trotted off to rescue the boys, leaving Dean alone with the brooding angel. 

Dean studied Cas' hunched back, moving closer to him as silently as he could, half afraid he'd spook him. Dean could feel the despair coming off him in waves, see it in the angle of his shoulders, in the stiffness of his back, in his bowed head.

"Gotta say, you're freaking me out a bit," Dean admitted, quietly. "Talk to me?" 

"What would you like me to say?" The words would have been belligerent if not for the tone, which was pure sadness and loss. 

"How did you get out of The Empty?" 

"Jack." Cas' voice seemed to crack over the name. "He came and got me out." 

"That's... that's amazing, Cas!" Relief bubbled to the surface. "I prayed over and over to Jack, but I never dared hope..." 

Feeling braver, Dean walked over to Cas, placing his hand on his hunched shoulder, damp from the rain. Cas flinched away and Dean's stomach dropped to his boots. In all the years he had known Cas, he had  _ never _ flinched away from his touch. Not once.

"What happened to you, man?" Dean asked, choked by the fear that was rising up in his chest, drowning the hope that never should have dared to attempt to rise to the surface in the first place. 

_ Silence. _

"Cas!" Dean reached out again, his fingers closing on Cas' hunched shoulder, his other hand wrapping around his bicep, turning him, spinning him, forcing Cas to finally face him, finally look at him. 

The first thing Dean noticed was that the cold, wet night air that was whipping around them was making Cas shiver. For a moment Dean wondered if it could be nerves, or, in a surge of panic, maybe a hidden injury? But no, Cas' teeth were chattering. Dean pressed the back of his hand against his cheek, ignoring the way Cas jerked back from his touch again as he did.

Where Angels always usually ran a few degrees hotter than everyone else, for the first time, Cas felt cold to the touch. Dean tried to get Cas to look at him, moving his own face into his eye line, then when Cas' eyes still darted away, he put an unsteady thumb under his chin and tipped his face up to meet his eyes. 

Finally,  _ finally,  _ Cas was looking up at him. His eyes were so full of pain that Dean felt it like a physical blow to the stomach. 

"Who hurt you? Who do I have to kill?" 

Cas shook his head mutely. 

"You're scaring me," Dean admitted softly. "Please just tell me. We'll fix it." 

"Dean," he finally spoke, but it was as if the words were stuck in his throat, impossible to get out. 

"Alright," Dean murmured. "It's alright." 

Then he was pulling Cas into his arms without even thinking about it, holding the trembling Angel to his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around him. He gently rubbed circles on his back, burying his nose in Cas’ neck, taking a couple of steadying breaths. As soon as he worked out who had hurt Cas, he was going to make them pay a hundred times over, but right now he wasn’t sure he’d actually ever be able to let go of him to do that.

"Whatever it is, we'll put it right," he soothed. 

"You can't fix this," Cas spoke into his collar. "I've betrayed Jack. I've lost Jack."

Cas' voice held a new level of despair that Dean had never heard before and he held him tighter, breathing in the familiar smell of him that made his stomach clench because he'd missed it so damn much. 

"You're gonna have to expand on that a bit." 

"I knew he would be upset with me, but I didn't expect…" Cas' voice was muffled by Dean's jacket and he was making no sense. What had Jack done?

"You died, Dean," Cas said suddenly, pulling back to look up at him, his eyes burning with guilt and grief - it was like a tidal wave of it was being held back and at any moment the dam would break and what spilled out would take out everything in its path. "You died here and I didn't know until it was too late."

"Feeling pretty alive here, Cas," Dean said lightly, resting his hands on Cas' shoulders and kneading them reassuringly. 

"I took you from Heaven." Cas' lip trembled like he was holding back tears and Dean swallowed the lump in his throat. "I don't know if it was the right thing to do. All Jack's lectures on free will, and I took yours just like Chuck did.”

There was a moment of silence and Cas bit his trembling lip, pulling away from Dean and covering his face with shaky hands. 

“I betrayed you  _ and  _ Jack. I deserve this.”

Cas looked lost and hopeless and Dean's fists clenched helplessly by his sides. He wanted to reach out to him again so much that his whole body ached with it. All this time, he’d been so sure he’d never see him again, now he was here he needed to touch him, to hold him, to reassure himself that Cas was real.

"I was selfish," Cas admitted softly. "You were with Sam, Bobby, your mom - everyone. Jack and I made you the perfect Heaven, but it was meant to be decades before you would need it."

"I don't remember," Dean said, frowning.

"It will come back to you.”

“I’m good with you having saved me, Cas. I know you’re big on the whole guilt thing, but don’t beat yourself up on my behalf. As for Jack, he’s a pretty understanding kid.”

“Being God has changed him,  _ is _ changing him more and more each day. He’s not… not the same boy we knew. It’s been really tough on him, and I let him down, made him angry.”

"I've never seen Jack angry in his life," Dean said. "C'mon man. He loves you."

Cas threw Dean a look before turning away from him, walking the few steps to the large oak tree they had parked in front of. He looked up into its branches, running his hand down it’s rough bark, as if hoping that the connection to nature might somehow bring Jack to him, full of forgiveness and hugs.

“Jack doesn’t have many rules,” Cas said, his back to Dean as he examined the tree. “We don’t smite or kill and we don’t interfere in human choices. I broke the third rule when I saved you, and I’ve been cast out of Heaven because of it.”

“It’s not like I  _ chose _ to get killed,” Dean said, frowning. Accepting that it might happen wasn’t the same thing as choosing it. 

“Oh Dean,” Cas turned around, blue eyes meeting green. “I’ve been watching you. I know what you’ve been doing.”

Dean felt the panic rising in his throat. 

“And what _ have _ I been doing?”

“Do you really need me to spell it out?”

“Yeah Cas, I do.” Dean shoved his trembling hands in his pockets. This was wrong. It was all wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be happening like this.

“You’ve been following in your dad’s footsteps, Dean. You’ve been taking risk after risk, knowing that one day there would be a fight you wouldn’t be walking away from.”

There was empathy in Cas’ eyes, compassion and understanding - but none of it helped. Dean’s head was spinning. It was different hearing it. He could pretend it wasn’t true if he just didn’t think too hard about it. Having Cas confront him with it made it all too real.

“You know what, Cas?” Dean said, his voice rising. “Fuck you.”

“Dean…”

“No. Fuck you, man. You have no idea what it’s been like. Every day has been pure fucking Hell, and this is what I  _ do _ !”

"I get that Dean," Cas replied. "I know how you see yourself, but tonight you died and it was meant to be for good. If you carry on like this, you'll die again and next time I can't save you." 

"What is it you'd like me to do?" Dean asked. "I mean, thanks for saving me, but what does this change if it's just kicking the can down the road?" 

“Find something to live for,” Cas said softly. “Change your life.”

“That easy, is it?” Dean felt a bitter laugh bubble up and he hated the sound of it. “You know, I always thought my life was shit because Chuck was controlling it, but it turns out that actually, it’s even more shit when I control it myself.”

“You always wanted a family,” Cas said. “To find a job fixing up cars, to fall in love with a beautiful woman, to have some kids to care for the way your parents never cared for you and Sam… That was meant to be your future, not a pointless death in an old, dirty barn before you’d lived at all.”

Dean's jaw set and he shook his head. "Cas… "

“Don’t tell me you don’t want that,” Cas interrupted. “I know you, Dean. Why have you just given up?”

Dean looked at Cas, those beautiful blue eyes that gave him butterflies every time they landed on him, the soft mouth that so rarely smiled, but when it did Dean knew from experience that it was impossible not to smile right back. He looked at the hint of stubble on Cas’ jaw that wasn’t normally there, and it made him want to drag his palm over it. He looked at Cas’ stupid coat, his ill-fitting suit that was far too big, his hair that permanently looked like he’d just got out of bed, his hands that had healed him more times than he could count.

“Why do you think, Cas?” he choked out, a world of meaning there for Cas to read, to interpret. Fuck, it terrified him.

Cas’ eyes stayed on him, his look giving nothing away and going on for so long that Dean wondered if he was going to speak at all. The rain was falling harder now, leaving Cas’ face wet, drops of rain gathering on his lips. For one breathless moment, Dean wondered what they would taste like if only he had the courage to close the gap between them and find out.

“You don't have to be what your dad made you," Cas said, and Dean felt anger rising inside him. That wasn't what he had meant, that wasn't what he had been trying to say. He ground his teeth in frustration. 

“I’m not  _ being _ what my dad made me,” he growled.

“No? Following through his journal, hunting his monsters?”

Dean grimaced and looked away; up at the blanket of darkness above them.

“Just how long  _ have _ you been back?” Dean asked accusingly. 

“Long enough to see that the path you’re on won’t end well - didn’t end well.”

“Great. That’s just great.” Dean sighed, running his hand through his wet hair. “Look, family, settling down, that's not me. I don't get the happily ever after - that's always belonged to Sam, not me." 

“I’ve heard this speech before and I don’t agree with any of it.”

"Fine. I'll be more careful, I will. Come for a drink and we'll catch up, and then you can beam back up to do whatever angel crap it is that Jack has you guys doing up there. There is no way he’s going to just kick you out Heaven."

“What part of  _ cast out _ don’t you understand? I’ve fallen, Dean. As I held you to my chest and brought you here, Jack seared the wings from my back. They are nothing but ash and bone. I will never get them back." 

Dean felt a chill go through him. "Jack did what?" 

"He was angry." 

"So he burned off your wings?" 

"It was my punishment." 

"Cas, I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry.” Dean could barely take in that the kid they’d lived with for years, brought up, loved like he was their own could do something so unbelievably wicked.

“What the fuck has happened to him? Do we have a problem? Is he evil? Have we got another Chuck situation going on here?”

“No, no,” Cas dismissed. “It’s not like that.”

“No offence Cas, but you’re sounding a bit brainwashed.”

“Dean!” Cas had raised his voice, frustration bubbling to the surface. “Stop. Jack is doing a good job - you should see the difference up there.”

“Your wings, Cas…”

"It doesn't matter." 

"Yes, it does." 

Dean felt impotent, powerless to fix anything. His head hurt.

“I knew there would be consequences, and I accept them. I have whatever Grace is left after killing those vampires, then when the last drop has drained away I’ll be entirely human, and that’s the way I’ll stay.”

The ‘ _ until I die’ _ went unsaid between them.

Guilt rose like bile, burning Dean’s throat and leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. His recklessness and selfishness had pushed Cas to do what he did. Whenever he let someone care about him, they got hurt or worse. He’d killed Cas -  _ again _ . No, he wasn’t dead yet, but a human life compared to having Eternity? It was as good as a death sentence.

“Put me back,” Dean said quietly, then he repeated it more loudly. “Put me back. Send me back and put this right!”

“Dean, don’t be ridicu…”

Dean reached into his coat and pulled out the demon blade he always carried there. He backed Cas up until his back hit the trunk of the tree, then he pressed the blade firmly into his hands, closing his fingers around the handle. 

“Right now. Make things right.”

“Stop,” Cas cried, trying to pull his trembling fingers free as Dean lifted the blade, pressing the tip of it to his chest, just over his heart, leaning into it.

“Do it!” Dean could hardly feel the sharp stab of pain as he pressed harder and the weapon pierced his skin. He pressed the point of the blade further and Cas looked in horror at the spreading stain of blood that was blooming on the material of his shirt. 

“I will not kill you!" Cas tried to pull his hand free, visibly panicking. If he pulled too hard he would let the dagger rebound as he did, potentially stabbing the blade further into Dean. Cas' other hand came up instead and tightened around Dean's. Tighter and tighter, crushing the hand that held the dagger to his chest until Dean dropped the blade into the wet grass with a hiss of pain. 

Dean wasn't ashamed of the tears that filled his eyes when he met Cas' distraught gaze. 

"You had no right to put this on me. I didn't ask for this!" 

Cas gripped Dean's shoulder tightly. "I know you didn't. I’m sorry. But it’s done now and your death won’t change anything. It was  _ my _ choice, and instead of feeling guilty, please will you just  _ live _ ." 

Dean growled with frustration. "I have been living! You would know that if you'd bothered to come and talk to me since Jack let you out.  _ How long have you been back _ ?" 

Grief was turning to anger, and anger he knew how to handle. Anger he could cope with.

"I did come down! And all I saw was you taking risk after risk!" 

"Fuck, Cas," Dean pushed Cas away from him, hard, dislodging the hand on his shoulder and sending him stumbling backwards into the tree. "You're not my freakin' babysitter. So I take a few risks… It's my life to risk! I’m not your human ball and chain! Thanks for the save, I’ll be more careful next time. You can go. You don’t need to stick around just to keep an eye on me.”

"Dean, I… don’t have anywhere to go." Cas’ voice was small, ashamed, guilty and at any other time it would have stabbed Dean in the heart, but now all it did was add to his guilt and stoke his anger. He felt unworthy and so fucking done.

Cas wrapped his coat around himself, seeming to shrink in front of Dean’s eyes. He shivered visibly.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to have me around.” He folded his arms tightly, defensively. “We’ve danced this dance before and I know the steps. If I can stay for a few nights while I sort out a job and somewhere to live, I’ll get out of your way as soon as I can.” 

More guilt, more shame. He knew that last time Cas had become human he had treated him appallingly, even if he’d thought he’d been doing it for the right reasons. Just because they had danced the dance before, didn't mean the steps hadn't changed significantly. He wasn't the same person now, and he and Cas had been through so much since then.

"Like we'd let you go anywhere!" Sam’s voice came from behind them, making Dean start as he slammed the car door shut on the children he’d just bundled inside. "There's plenty of room at the bunker. You can have your old room back - everything is still there. Dean wouldn't let us touch any of your stuff."

Cas walked around Dean, giving him more room than was necessary, like he didn’t want to be close to him, and Dean couldn’t blame him.

"I'm not sure that's the best idea, Sam," he said, before submitting to the enthusiastic hug that Sam bestowed on him. He clapped Sam awkwardly on the back and smiled. "But I appreciate the offer." 

"Well we can talk about it when we're home," Sam said, smiling at Cas. "I'm really glad you're back."

"Thank you, Sam. It’s good to see you too." 

Cas’ gaze flickered to Dean fleetingly but then he looked away again. He slid into the car next to the two young boys, who looked half asleep already, able to relax now they were safe. 

Dean rummaged in the trunk of the Impala and produced a couple of towels, throwing one to Sam who was bending his lanky body into the passenger seat, and not looking at Cas as he lobbed one into the back for him. 

“If anyone is cold, there’s a blanket under the passenger seat,” he said, sliding into the driver's seat and turning the radio on, in the hopes that it would drown out the need for any conversation.

The lack of conversation actually made things worse. Dean tried not to look at Cas in the mirror, but he felt his eyes on him every single time the angel looked up. He could hear every breath, smell that scent that was uniquely Cas, sense it every time he shifted in his seat. The tension in the car was palpable and Sam tried to break it by engaging Cas in conversation.

"So Cas, are you going to tell us how you got out?" Sam asked, turning right around in his seat to look at him while they talked. 

"Jack came for me." 

_ Yeah, and then you figured you'd not call, not write, not answer a single fucking prayer to let us know.  _

"I heard you telling Dean that you can't go back to Heaven?" 

"Yes." 

"I can't believe Jack wouldn't let you go back, maybe if you guys talk…?" 

"Jack was very clear." 

"But…" 

Dean rolled his eyes. "Hey Sammy, why don't you give Mr Chatty here a break from the questions." 

By the time they had dropped the kids off, flashed fake FBI badges at the police and then headed back to the bunker, Dean was overwhelmed with anger, guilt and hurt. It all just seemed to be building up. Months of not feeling much at all hadn’t prepared him to feel everything at once, but then who would be prepared to find out that their dead best friend was actually alive and hadn’t bothered to drop in to let them know?

When they got out of the car, Cas stopped Dean with a tentative touch on his shoulder. He put his hand over his heart, healing the gouge that was there under the bloodied shirt.

“No!”

Cas visibly jumped. “What?”

“Your Grace is finite, right? Stop fucking wasting it on me!” And without a word of thanks, Dean pushed past Cas and went inside. 

Eileen was there to greet them, and Sam cracked open some beers, offering them around. Cas shook his head, and Dean headed to his room without another word.

“I’ll turn in too,” Cas told them, awkwardly. “It's been a tiring day. Hello again Eileen.”

Sam and Eileen took advantage of the peace and snuggled up on the sofa to watch TV together, Sam telling Eileen in hushed tones about what had happened that night.

"I knew I should have come with you tonight," she said, snuggling closer. "Miracle would have been okay on her own for a night. Maybe next time I’ll go and you can dog-sit." 

Sam held her tighter, not wanting to come across as overprotective or misogynistic, but not able to tell her that he didn't want her out there, didn't want her risking her life. He loved her. He loved her more than he ever thought he could love someone, and every time Dean found another case to work on, another Demon to hunt, his heart sank in case it meant he wouldn't be coming back to her. Hunting just wasn't what he wanted anymore, and he desperately hoped Eileen was starting to feel the same way too. It was time for him to make some changes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I know Jared said that five years had passed since Chuck's defeat, it didn't make sense to me, so in this world it has been five months as it seems to fit much better.


	3. Hurts Like Hell

Sometimes Cas regretted his choices. 

Who was he kidding? He _often_ regretted his choices. However, saving Dean Winchester - that was a choice that he would never regret, no matter what the consequences. He wasn't proud of it, but he would let the entire world _burn_ just to save that one man from his fate. And that was why, after a night spent on a lumpy mattress, sleep never coming close, he knew he had to at least try to talk some sense into Dean. 

It had been a while since Cas had been completely powerless and he hated how useless he felt. If he couldn't work out a way to get Dean to change how he lived his life, chances were that he was going to die on another hunt, sooner rather than later. Right now Cas truly was no more useful than a baby in a trench coat, so there would be no bringing him back a second time. Third time. Fourth? Alright, maybe Jack did have a point about him interfering. 

He felt a pang of sorrow at the thought of Jack. Aching, guilty and just overwhelmingly sad, he knew that he'd destroyed the relationship he had with the boy he loved like a son. But Jack had been wrong, and it was Dean's _life_ they had been arguing over - Dean who had offered himself up time and time again, just to save this world from itself _._ Dean who went purgatory for an entire year, just to save him when he didn’t deserve saving. Dean who came back for him time and time again, never giving up. Except for the last time.

Cas looked up at the dingy and suspiciously stained ceiling above his bed and noted absently that it was in need of a paint job. He wondered how long he should wait before approaching Dean? His friend was such an angry sleeper that he had already written off this morning entirely. Maybe he would go and buy him some pie as a peace offering and then try? 

Cas sighed, trying to get his head comfortable on the pillow. As his Grace had started to slowly ebb, he had started to become more and more aware of the uncomfortable sensations of being human. The scratchy feeling of the blanket, the awkward seam on his left sock that kept rubbing against his little toe, the itch of the stubble on his chin that was begging to be shaved off. How humans concentrated on anything at all with all this going on was a mystery. 

Fabulous - now he needed to urinate. How useless was a body that demanded you drink copious amounts of fluid for survival, only to then issue urgent orders for you to expel it all again? As Dean would say, _this_ _sucked._

This bunker had been the closest thing to a home that Cas had ever had. In Heaven he'd been a soldier and had lived in the Garrison, but he'd never had a space of his own within it. This place was different - it was relatively safe, it was where almost everyone he cared about lived and it was where some of his most happy memories came from. This bedroom wasn't always just his, but it was his when he was there, when he needed it. The water pressure in the shower was good, which was something he could appreciate again now he would have to start showering again; the library was extensive and both Sam and Dean were reasonably inoffensive housemates, if you didn't count the smells Sam made that he always seemed so proud of. Luckily Eileen's presence had caused Sam to put a metaphorical cork in it. At least Cas hoped it was metaphorical - with the Winchester brothers, who ever knew? Either way, it was as good a reason as any to encourage Sam to have his girlfriend around more. 

Under other circumstances, he could be content living out his human years here. 

Under other circumstances, he'd have spent last night drinking in the library with Dean, exchanging stories, relaxed and happy, alcohol warming their bellies. 

Under other circumstances, none of his reasonably inoffensive housemates would be aware that he was in love with them. Well, one of them.

Under other circumstances, said inoffensive housemate wouldn't be looking at Cas like he was something Miracle had left on the sitting-room rug. 

His Grace not depleted enough for him to feel at all sleepy, Cas had had all night to think up a game plan but had come up with nothing that was of any use. At around 5am he had started to question how different this actually was to being in The Empty. He didn't need to be forced to relive his greatest mistakes over and over - when he was alone like this he did it to himself anyway. Blessed relief from that had been one of the benefits to Jack having needed him so much - he'd barely had a moment alone to think, kept busy rebuilding worlds, putting Heaven and Hell to rights instead. Maybe when he found a job it would help to distract him and quieten his mind? 

Cas shifted, trying to get comfortable and failing. He remembered Dean once excitedly informing him that the mattresses here were made of something called memory foam. But while Dean's seemed to have nothing but memories of pillows and fluffy clouds, Cas' mattress seemed to have stored the memory of several large rocks.

He heard Dean's bedroom door opening and noted the way his own heartbeat picked up and his mouth became suddenly dry. This wasn't a new thing - Dean had had this effect on him long before he'd become human, and with the subtle torture of being ten feet away from the place where Dean lay his head, Cas wondered if this could count as his own personal purgatory. 

By the time he had made up his mind to stop feeling sorry for himself and face the day, he could hear the subtle noises that indicated Sam and Eileen were getting up for the day too - the murmur of voices, water running, a feminine giggle that could have come from either of them.

They were comforting sounds, but he couldn't relax. He was no closer to figuring out how to best approach Dean, how best to convince him that changes needed to be made, that his life had value. He was holding out hope that Dean had calmed down overnight and would maybe seek Cas out himself. They did have a lot to catch up on, and if they could put Cas' confession of love behind them, they could get back to being friends again. 

Maybe Cas wasn't the right person to approach him? For a moment last night, when Dean had held him in his arms, it had felt so close to coming home that he could have wept from the sheer relief of it. But as always with Dean Winchester, the happy moments were fleeting and inconsistent, like the moment Dean became aware of their very existence he banished them away, never allowing himself more than a moment of happiness. Last night, just minutes after pulling him close, Dean had barely been able to look at him without trembling in anger. In contrast, Dean's regard of his brother was unwavering and constant - he needed to get Sam on board. 

Breakfast was an awkward and torturous affair. Sam greeted Cas warmly and then informed him that Dean had gone for a drive and he could almost hear the, _to get away from you_ that Sam was too kind to say. 

Lifting himself onto his stool, Cas warily eyed the food Sam was preparing on the stove in front of him. With humanity very slowly building in him, he wasn't sure if he needed to eat yet or not. He felt queasy, achy, raw and tired, and he imagined this was a bit like how humans felt when they caught the flu. His head hurt and his arm had a scratch on it that he didn't want to waste his remaining Grace on, but it had started itching as it healed and it was tiresome. 

"Are we going to have to call you Steve again?" Sam asked with a grin, teasing him in the hopes of breaking some of the strained tension. Cas grimaced. 

"I'm going to do exactly the opposite of what I did last time I was human," he informed Sam, taking a plate of pancakes from him and sniffing them gingerly. He had loved food last time he was human, to the point where he was absolutely sure that, if left to his own devices, he would have become very round very quickly. Having a human sense of taste again would be a benefit that could almost outweigh the several hundred downsides, but as always with human pleasures there was a fine line between Heaven and Hell. 

"They're blueberry!" Sam informed him, cutting into his and smiling at Eileen proudly, reminding Cas of a puppy who was craving a pat on the head. 

"Yes. I'm just unsure whether or not I'm hungry," Cas explained. "I still have some Grace, and I'm unsure if this feeling is hunger or just anxiety."

“Do angels suffer from anxiety?”

"I'm not sure I count as an angel anymore, but yes." 

Did he count as anything anymore? He didn't fit anywhere. Not in Heaven with his brothers, with Jack. Not here with Dean who quite obviously didn't want him there if his early morning escape was any indication. 

"Dean said that he was meant to die last night? That you saved him?" 

Cas nodded, forcing a small triangle of blueberry pancake into his mouth, even though his stomach churned with misery and the food felt like cardboard on his tongue. It took a heroic effort not to pull a face at the taste that immediately assaulted his now very obviously still not human taste buds.

"Well, I don't know if he said it, but thank you," Sam said, watching him chew. "He's been taking a lot of risks…" 

Cas nodded again, unable to swallow down the food in his mouth to properly reply. 

“Nice?” Sam asked, so hopefully that Cas didn't have the heart to be honest with him. 

"Very good," he said, trying to swallow a piece whole in an effort not to taste it. "The tang of the berries is very refreshing." 

Sam smiled indulgently at him. Life was pretty good for Sam - they'd defeated Chuck, Jack had brought his girlfriend back into existence, and Cas knew that Sam had a date with her later. For once life was pretty damn perfect for Sam, and Cas really hoped he would be able to work out how to keep it that way. 

The jarring sound of a door slamming brought him out of his thoughts and a moment later Dean stomped down into the bunker, Miracle close on his heels. He was still wearing the same clothes that Cas had seen him wearing the night before. He looked tired and tense. Cas's heart sank. 

"Pancakes, Dean?" Sam offered hopefully. 

"Nah," Dean declined, not bothering to look at any of them as he swept past, an angry blur of red and black.

"Shouldn't you talk to him?" Eileen asked Sam. "Find out what's wrong?" 

"I don't think even Dean knows what's wrong," Sam sighed, covering the extra pancakes in case Dean wanted them later. 

"He'll be better when I've left," Cas said, signing the words to Eileen as he spoke. "I'm job hunting today, so it shouldn't be long."

"I don't think that's it, Cas," Sam argued as kindly as he could. "Why don't you go and talk to him?" 

Feeling Sam and Eileen's stares as he tried to swallow another mouthful of food, he sighed before reluctantly slipping off his stool, abandoning the rest of his pancakes. He stopped at the hot pot of coffee to pour Dean a large mug of it in the faint hope that it might improve his disposition, then dutifully went to find him. 

Forcing the pancakes down really hadn't helped the nervous rolling of his stomach and Cas's feet seemed to drag more and more the closer he got to Dean's bedroom door. He didn't want to fight anymore, but with Dean so obviously angry and resentful towards him, Cas wasn't sure how to avoid it. Last time he became human Dean had pushed him away entirely and this time they were hardly on a good footing to start with. He fought his every instinct to turn back and avoid conflict, and knocked. 

Cas wasn't expecting the door to open. He was steeled for the passive rejection of being ignored entirely. He'd expected to have to turn back, to go back to forcing down his pancakes, left to try to pretend Dean’s aversion to his presence didn’t hurt. 

When the door immediately opened, Cas took an alarmed step back, spilling hot coffee on his shoe as he did. Dean's large frame filled the doorway, arms folded defensively over his chest and Cas immediately noticed the dark circles under his tired eyes. His hair stuck out at all angles and his clothes were crumpled, as if he'd spent all night tossing and turning in them.

"What is it?" Dean asked tiredly, his voice throaty and deep from lack of sleep. Cas swallowed down the stab of want that had rushed to the surface at the sound of it. 

Cas held out the slightly less filled cup of coffee and Dean unfolded his arms to take it without a thanks, placing it unceremoniously on the table by the door.

"If you're not eating because you're avoiding me, I'm about to go out to see if any local places are advertising work, so I'll be out in a few minutes. You shouldn't miss out on meals because I'm here." 

"I'm not avoiding you," Dean denied, leaning one hip against the door frame in a position that exuded attitude and insolence. 

Cas couldn't quite quash the urge to roll his eyes. _No, of course not, Dean._

When Dean was like this Cas knew from bitter experience that there was no talking to him. Staying to just let Dean use him as an emotional punching bag would benefit neither of them. He would clear the air and then get out of Dean's way. 

"What I said to you before the Empty took me…" Cas started, the churning in his stomach increasing tenfold at the mere mention of it.

Dean's jaw clenched and he visibly swallowed, his eyes not leaving Cas' face. 

"What about it?" he ground out. 

"What I said… What I confessed -" Cas took a breath. He could do this - he had to. "If that's why you're…" 

None of this was coming out the way he'd hoped. 

"I ain't getting any younger, Cas. You're gonna have to finish a sentence if you want me to understand what the hell you're saying." 

"You're an asshole." Well, it was a finished sentence. 

"Yep," agreed Dean with a nod, his beautiful face passive, entirely expressionless. It gave nothing at all away to Cas, who was desperately scanning his face for any sort of clue to how he felt. 

"I didn't think I'd ever be back here, that I'd ever see you again, or I never would have…" 

"You never would have?" The tone he used was so accusing and cold that Cas flinched from it. Dean's mouth was set in a hard, straight line and Cas felt panic start to rise in his throat, prickle at his palms. He could face down Demons, Gods and armies of warrior angels, but not Dean, not like this. 

Cas took a steadying breath and forced a friendly, casual half smile onto his face that he aimed at Dean's left ear, because there was no way on Heaven or Earth he could keep looking him in the eye. 

"I don't want there to be any awkwardness between us," Cas finished lamely. "It's been a few months for you, but I've been away for much longer. It was all a long time ago." 

The air felt thick with tension. Cas shifted from one foot to the other, looking anywhere but at Dean. Had he fidgeted this much before he had started to become human? 

"I get it," Dean finally replied. When Cas dared to sneak a glance at him, his stony expression had given way to familiar anger, his eyes flashing. "I know it was a goodbye - your Swan Song. It was a decent farewell, Cas. Real touching."

Cas closed his eyes as if he'd been physically struck. When he opened them again tears shone brightly, threatening to spill over. 

Seemingly oblivious to Cas shattering in front of him, Dean carried on. "You don't need to kill yourself explaining it to me. I've not lost any sleep over it." 

Cas couldn’t breathe - why couldn’t he breathe?

"Don't," he pleaded, his voice breaking on the word. He couldn't say what he was pleading for - for Dean not to cast aside his confession like it was nothing? For him not to rubbish the most important moment in his life, the most important words he had ever spoken?

Cas’ vision swam as a wave of nausea hit him and he fought not to close his eyes - he couldn't let Dean see the tears spill over. Dean's fists were clenched at his sides, and at Cas' plea, he spun away from the door, going to sit on his bed with his head in his hands. Cas hovered in the doorway for a moment, not knowing what to do. He couldn’t stay here, couldn’t be near Dean. Every single cell in his body was telling him to run before he broke apart. He turned.

"What do you want from me, Cas?" Dean asked wearily, his voice muffled by his fingers. 

He wanted to tell Dean that he didn't want a thing from him, but the words were stuck in his throat and all he could do was shake his head, wiping his mouth shakily with the back of his hand. 

Panic was overtaking him now, seeping through his body, the drumming in his ears deafening him to anything else, although he registered in the back of his mind that Dean was saying _something_ , talking to him. Cas backed out of the room, not even noticing what he was doing until his back hit the wall. He looked at Dean, met his red-rimmed eyes and then he ran. 

He tried to think through the panic - he couldn't go to his room, that was too close to Dean. He couldn't go to the kitchen to find Sam, Eileen was there and he didn't know her well enough to let her see him like this. He didn't know what he needed, he just wanted this feeling to go away. It was crawling under his skin like something living, rising up inside him until he felt like he was being eaten alive by it. Hot tears were spilling down his cheeks and he burst out of the bunker into the daylight and kept running. 

Cas had been running for a good seven or eight minutes solidly, his foot thuds on the pavement an oddly comforting sound, the wind drying the tears on his cheeks as it whipped his face. The panic was receding, despair taking its place. This was worse than when Dean had blamed him for Mary, this he couldn't come back from. He couldn't keep piecing himself back together again. 

He ran past shops, restaurants, women walking their dogs, children on their way to school. He was passing a brightly coloured ice cream parlour when he heard his name being gasped behind him. 

"Cas! C'mon. I'm not fit enough for this!" 

Cas slowed to a stop as soon as he recognised the voice. His chest heaving, he bent, resting his palms on his knees to catch his breath and ease the burning in his muscles that just served to remind him of what he'd lost, that soon he would be truly human. 

"Must sit!" Sam gasped, gesturing to the tables and chairs just behind them. He dropped into a chair and rested his hot face on the cool, shiny surface of the table. 

"I'm not sure that's very hygienic," Cas observed, dropping into the chair opposite him and pressing his hand firmly against his side to try to chase away the stitch under his ribs. 

"I'm dying!" Sam groaned against the table. "You're so fast. What is that, leftover Angel juice?" 

_No, just intense mental anguish and a desperate desire to not be within ten miles of Dean Winchester._

"Why did you follow me, Sam?" 

Sam slowly righted himself and pulled a handful of napkins from the dispenser in the middle of their table. He handed some to Cas and swiped tiredly at the sweat on his brow with the rest. Cas dabbed at his face, glad that the tears had stopped - crying wasn't something he was used to doing and he disliked how exposed it made him feel. 

"Because I've never seen you this upset before," Sam said gently. "Because we’re friends and you need someone right now. What did Dean say?" 

"Nothing that I didn't already know." 

A red faced lady in an apron, with dark blonde hair in a messy bun pushed the door open with a loud jangle and she stomped grumpily over to their table. 

"We're not opening for another twenty minutes!" 

"We can wait," Sam said with a friendly smile. "We're not in a rush." 

"You'd better be ordering something!" she scowled, turning on her heel. 

"Ah, the joys of customer service in this town," Sam said with a rueful smile. 

He watched Cas shredding his napkin with a contemplative look on his face. Running his hand through his hair, he sighed. 

"You're leaving, aren't you?" 

Cas nodded miserably. "I can't stay, Sam." 

"Where will you go?" 

"I need to find a job and somewhere to live, and I was thinking of somewhere not too far from here. Far enough that I won't bump into him, but it would be good to still have a friend nearby."

Sam's face lit up and he gave Cas such an affectionate look that, despite his misery, Cas found himself smiling back. When they had first met he had thought he would never warm to Sam, but now he was incredibly grateful to be able to call him a friend. 

"I can help," Sam offered. "You can have our hacked credit card. We don't use it now we've got the Men of Letters accounts for everything we need. You'll need clothes, furniture and things to get you started." 

Cas let out a breath that he hadn't realised he'd been holding. Last time he had been human, he'd had to start with little more than the clothes on his back. He’d managed but it hadn’t been easy.

"You know, I've been thinking of investing some money in buying a house," Sam admitted. "We're going to want to start a family at some point soon, and I'd like any kid we have to have a yard to play in and actual windows in their room." 

"I'm happy for you, Sam," Cas said, even pausing in his napkin destruction to beam at his friend. "You and Eileen are a very good match." 

"Yeah, well she still hasn't said yes to marrying me, so you might want to put those congratulations on hold. I've been turned down an embarrassing amount of times." 

"She seems to be very fond of you. I don't think you have anything to worry about." 

"It's alright, but while I'm fantasising about playing happy families with Eileen, Dean is on self destruct." Sam lowered his voice, as if there were people around to overhear even though there was nobody nearby. "You know Dean has been different since you left, don't you?" 

Cas sighed and picked up another napkin.

"The way he's living, he's not going to survive long enough to be called Uncle Dean," Cas agreed. 

"When we lost you and Jack he just shut down completely. If it's not in a beer bottle or dad's hunting journal, he isn't interested." 

"I know you're leaving anyway," Sam said, putting his hand in Cas' arm and leaning forward earnestly. "But you should know that none of this is your fault - you don’t have to go." 

Cas felt that his lack of culpability was debatable, but now really wasn't the best time to start listing the mistakes he'd made. Maybe he would write them all down and furnish Sam with a nice laminated copy and see if he would still smile at him so kindly then. Knowing Sam, he probably still would - Cas had never met anyone as kind or forgiving as the younger Winchester brother.

Out loud he said, "All that matters is that Dean gets off the destructive path he's on."

"I've tried talking to him," Sam said, leaning back in his chair. "I've tried to get him to drink less, to talk to a doctor about his moods, maybe see about getting some counselling. I even offered to go too - Lord knows we've both got some serious daddy issues. He threw a Chinese throwing star at my head! Missed me by about an inch!" 

Cas winced. 

"I'm at a loss," Sam continued. "All I can do is have his back on hunts, and I can't keep doing that. I'm so done with living that life." 

Cas nodded. It wasn't news to him - Sam had always planned to give up hunting when Chuck was defeated. They all had, even Dean, although no one would know that to look at him now.

"Either the monsters will get him or his liver will give out - he's not looking to survive this long term." Sam's jaw was set, and for the first time Cas noticed that his fingernails were bitten down to the quick and red raw. Cas' heart went out to him. 

"I know," Cas agreed softly. He knew exactly how bad it was and nothing he had to say would comfort Sam. "He needs help. He's been made to believe that there's nothing more to him than being a hunter, a killer. He doesn’t see that there could be a future for him." 

"It's all dad taught him to be. Any time Dean tried to have anything for himself, dad would make sure he felt so shit about it that he stopped even trying.”

“First your father and then Chuck.”

"We need a game plan," Sam said decisively. 

" _You_ need a game plan. If I stay I'm going to make things worse." 

Sam frowned like he disagreed, but he didn't argue and Cas appreciated it. 

"I'm going to see if I can gather together some friends - remind him he's got people who give a damn."

"That's a good idea."

"Eileen has an ex hunter friend she thinks Dean might get on well with. Maybe setting him up on a date would help?" Sam was looking at Cas, obviously gauging his reaction and Cas made sure to keep his expression as neutral as possible. 

"Someone who has left hunting behind would be perfect for teaching him how to live without it,” Cas agreed, ignoring the burn of jealousy in his throat. “Can you avoid going on any more cases for a while? He needs to learn to get his distractions somewhere else." 

"It's not gonna be easy. Dean is hellbent on working his way through dad's journal." 

"If Dean dies now, he's gone for good. I can't get into Heaven without my wings." 

"I'm so sorry about your wings, Cas." 

Cas took in Sam’s kind eyes, his forehead wrinkled in concern, the floppy hair that Dean threatened to shave off while he slept at least once a fortnight. He was a good man who very much deserved the happy ending he would get, but Cas had felt the sadness radiating from him in the timeline he had so effectively destroyed. Sam too would live a much happier life if Dean survived to be part of it all.

"It’s the ultimate punishment,” Cas admitted. “It was used in the past to humiliate the very worst of the traitors.”

“I don’t understand how _our_ Jack could do that. He didn’t have a vindictive bone in his body.”

“I’ve spent so much time trying to remind Jack who he is and what’s important,” Cas said, aching at the thought of Jack being on his own now, with no support. “That’s the hardest part - who will make sure he stays on the right path?”

Sam had no answers and for a moment he and Cas just sat together, lost in their own thoughts, watching the people walking past. 

“I should go back - I need to check on Dean. Will you come back with me, at least for now? I won’t leave you and Dean alone together - you can use Eileen and I as a buffer.”

“If we leave now, without buying anything, that scary red-faced lady will hunt us down.”

“We could buy a couple of Waffles to go…”

“How many waffles do you think we need to buy to make up for this?” Cas said, indicating the white fluffy pile of shredded napkin.

Two banana and salted caramel waffles, two coffees and a dozen doughnuts to go later, the two men were back at the bunker, Cas steeled for Dean’s reaction.

"He's gone for a drive," Eileen explained, grabbing a fork and digging into a waffle. “He wouldn’t talk to me. I think he went looking for Cas.”

“I’ll call him,” Sam said, pulling his phone from his pocket. 

“I’m going to go to my room to read for a while,” Cas said. “Thank you for the talk, Sam.”

“Any time, Cas. Dean? Yeah, he’s here.”

Cas closed the door to his bedroom, cursing its lack of a working lock. Dean had added locks to his and Sam’s doors, but not bothered with the other rooms. He turned the light off and lay on the bed, fully clothed. The darkness didn’t comfort him, but if anyone tried to open the door there was a chance they would assume he was sleeping and would leave him alone. They wouldn't know that his grace was still enough for him not to need to sleep. He just couldn’t cope with any more today. 

This life was a sum of all his mistakes. An eternity, billions of years, always thinking that what he was doing was the right thing. He’d followed orders blindly, then one man had taught him to think for himself, to care and fight for what was actually right. Since then, how much of what he’d done was good? If even Dean didn’t want to be around him, what was he doing? He had one life now; one short human life. He needed a new start, away from everything he was before.

When there was a tap on the door, Cas had been trying to clear his mind for no more than ten minutes. He was trying a technique he’d read about, where he would picture a blue sky full of clouds, and would mentally clear the clouds from his mind one by one. But it just made him miss his wings.

“Cas?” Dean’s voice was hushed, like he was trying not to wake him. Then he raised his voice to a normal level, seemingly realising that Cas was unlikely to actually be sleeping. “Cas, would you stop faking and talk to me?”

The door opened an inch and Cas quickly closed his eyes.

_Enough. Leave me alone._

"C'mon man. We need to talk about this." 

Cas didn't want to talk this out, not anymore. He'd been such a fool to think that Dean had cared about him. It hadn’t been that Cas had ever thought that Dean had feelings for him, but he had been duped into believing that their friendship had meant something to him. Cas remembered vividly the way he’d felt last time he’d become human - the constant sinking feeling of loneliness, the knowledge that he wasn’t important, wasn’t loved. It all came back to him in a clenching pang of misery and uncertainty.

Paralised by his sadness, utterly void of hope, Cas stayed silent, and after a few minutes he heard a sigh and the familiar footsteps of Dean Winchester walking away.


	4. I'll Take Lonely Tonight

Three days. 

Three days was as long as Cas managed to last before, in desperation, he walked out of the bunker and rented the first apartment he was offered. It had a shower, a bed and most importantly it was void of persistent hunters and their personal space issues. Oh, the irony. 

They still hadn't spoken, but to Dean's credit it wasn't for lack of trying on his part. Usually the one to shut down, back off and become angry and cold, this time Dean seemed to be chasing Cas. He had got up earlier and earlier, hoping to catch Cas before he left for the day. He'd stayed up late waiting for him, meaning Cas had to get Sam to text him when the coast was clear and Dean had finally gone to bed. Different notes were posted under his door each day:

**I'm sorry.**

**Please talk to me.**

**C'mon Cas, don't be a dick.**

The last one was so very Dean that it would have made Cas smile if he'd felt capable of finding the humour in anything. 

Sam had tried to intervene, sitting Cas down with a beer and using his 'this is serious' face. There had been suggestions that Dean was sorry, distraught even. Couldn't he just sit down with Dean for ten minutes and let him apologise, put them all out of their misery? But Cas didn't want or need an apology. He knew where he stood and he knew where Dean stood. An apology wouldn't change the fact that to keep putting himself in the firing line over and over again was insane. Self preservation had finally kicked in and Cas acknowledged that to open himself up to any more hurt was practically self harm at this stage. It was over. He was done. He _had_ to be done. 

The last straw for him had been coming home in the early hours of the morning to find that Dean had pulled a chair up to Cas' bedroom door and was fast asleep in it. He'd obviously not meant to fall asleep - his head had fallen back against the wall, his jaw slack, his hand still clutching a half finished cup of coffee in an impressive death grip. If the plan had been for the coffee to keep him awake, it had failed spectacularly. 

Paralysed, Cas stood inches from Dean, close enough to reach out and touch him for the first time in days. Dean's face was relaxed in sleep, open and unguarded in stark contrast to his usual carefully wary expression. 

Cas never got to study him like this, so utterly unobserved. It felt wrong, but so freeing to just be able to _look_ , to drink him in without having to force himself to look away before Dean noticed. And Dean _did_ notice _._ He would cock his head, raise his eyebrow, narrow his eyes, or worse than all that, all too often he would _wink_ and leave Cas fighting down a blush of embarrassment. 

Although impossible to see from a distance, when he was this close to Dean, Cas could count every tiny freckle on his face. He had hundreds of them, each one utterly perfect. Cas took in the rough stubble of his jaw, his dark messy hair, his lashes that were long, almost feminine in their length. Then there were his lips, parted in his sleep, that looked too soft, too vulnerable to belong to a man so strong. 

_Oh God, this hurts._

Tearing his eyes away, he edged past Dean and quietly pushed open the door to his room. Pulling out his blue and grey striped blanket, his favourite because of how soft it felt against his skin, Cas tiptoed back out of the room and eyed the sleeping man contemplatively. 

Waking Dean on a morning was generally a difficult and not altogether pleasant task that often involved things being thrown at his head with startling accuracy. Despite the negative reactions once Dean _was_ awake, he slept ridiculously soundly for a man with intimate knowledge of what was out there to go bump in the night. 

Cas was fairly sure he could get the blanket over him without incident. Nights were getting cold, and thanks to the constant air conditioning, the Bunker was always on the chilly side even in the height of summer. He couldn't just leave Dean to get cold - it was Cas' fault he was out in the hallway instead of in his warm bed. 

Prying the cup from Dean's unyielding fingers turned out to be the hardest part. Pulling the cup didn't help at all, prying his fingers off it one by one didn't work, because by the time he got to the last finger, all the rest had tightened up again. Cas had resorted to wiggling it out like it was a stubborn peg in a hole. Dean's eyelashes had fluttered and his breathing had changed, which had made Cas freeze several times, until finally it was free. 

Eventually Dean was covered by the blanket, shielded against the cold night air. He'd barely stirred as it had been tucked around him, even when Cas had accidentally brushed against the bare skin of his arm. Cas let out a breath that he felt like he'd been holding the entire time and took a moment to look at Dean. 

Should he be able to look tired even while he was sleeping? The fact that fatigue was evident on his face even when he was meant to be resting just succeeded in breaking Cas' heart all over again. He bent closer to tuck the corner of the blanket very gently under his arm, and Dean made a sleepy sound, almost like a growl, low in his throat that made Cas leap back like he'd been burned. 

Cas clutched his chest. Now he was human he wasn't sure his heart could take this. Caring about someone this much was hell - he didn't understand how humans enjoyed any of this. It was complicated, painful and just plain exhausting.

He had felt an inexplicable pull towards Dean since the first moment he laid his hands on him in Hell, what felt like a lifetime ago now. In a heartbeat he'd felt both lost and found all at once and for the life of him, he couldn't explain any of it. It was like their souls were linked irrevocably from that moment on, and however much he fought it, nothing would unlink them. He belonged to this man, this fragile, breakable, beautiful human. 

In all that time, all those years, he'd never once touched Dean unless he'd been entirely sure it was welcome, or unless it had been entirely essential in saving his life. He wasn't sure what was making him so weak against temptation now - maybe his humanity was eroding his sense of right and wrong? Maybe the confession, the acknowledgement of how he felt about Dean had turned everything on its head and set him free? All he knew was that he was struggling to stay strong, to walk away, to not kiss Dean, just once before he left for good. 

It was the first time that he'd ever truly come close to doing anything like this. Leaning closer, feeling Dean's breath warm on his face as he did, it made him feel like the world was tilting on its axis. Everything was being thrown off kilter, his head felt light, butterflies danced in his stomach. 

Just one kiss. Just a brush of his lips over Dean’s - it was one tiny movement. It wouldn't be a big deal, just a single fleeting moment in time, then it would be done, be lost to them both and no one would ever know. Maybe it would mean he could finally move on? Maybe it would be like a fairytale and the spell would be broken?

He was so close now that Cas' eyes couldn't focus and Dean's face was blurring in front of him. He closed his eyes and took a steadying breath. 

"Cas?" The word was groggy with sleep, slurred, questioning. 

He didn't hear the word so much as he felt it vibrate through him. Cas' eyes flew open and he recoiled in horror, instantly disgusted at himself for what he'd nearly done. What kind of monster was he, preying on his friend while he slept? 

He hated himself, hated how much he had wanted to kiss Dean, hated that he had so little control. Dean didn’t deserve this, had done nothing to encourage it - what was wrong with him? What was he even thinking? _Fuck._

Without waiting for a reaction, he pulled back so quickly that he stumbled, almost falling. Then he turned on his heel and for the second and last time in his life, he ran out of the bunker as if Hell Hounds were on his heels. 

If Cas had believed in signs, he would have been very impressed by the location of his new apartment, which was over the top of a nautically themed restaurant called The Safe Harbor. It wasn’t a large place by any stretch of the imagination - it was just two rooms and a bathroom, but it had an amazingly comfortable sofa, a TV that he could watch Netflix on if he stole Sam’s password and a bed for when his Grace got to the level where he could no longer avoid sleeping, which he worried would happen soon. 

He furnished the flat with a few essentials, but, not wanting to abuse the credit card Sam had given him, he only bought what he absolutely couldn't live without. His one luxury had been very expensive, high quality, Egyptian cotton bedding, because as it turned out, human Cas was ridiculously tactile. 

As an angel his senses had been sharp, but his sense of touch was dulled. It was incredibly useful for battles, as he could sustain pretty horrific injuries and carry on. As his grace drained, his nerves had gone into overdrive and Cas was discovering simple human pleasures, like how amazing a hot bubble bath felt, cocooning him, silky bubbles against his skin. He wasn't sleeping, but he did go to bed purely for the hedonistic feeling of his bare skin against the cool sheets. Embracing the small pleasures was, in part, what kept him from despair. 

Sam had visited, bringing with him a large leafy plant in a massive green pot, which he'd tasked Cas with keeping alive. It had seemed to Cas like a fairly awful present - _here is some responsibility in a pot. You're a failure if you let it die._ But Sam had meant well, so Cas had read up on plant care and six weeks in, Nigel the Yucca was still going strong. If it was still alive in a year, Sam had informed him that he would upgrade him to a cat, and Cas quite liked the idea.

When Sam wasn't hanging out in his apartment with him, Cas spent a lot of time in the restaurant below. The apartment was furnished with a small kitchenette, but Cas very quickly discovered that cooking was not one of the life skills that he would excel at. He'd managed to burn toast, turn porridge into one solid smoking lump in the microwave and somehow he'd set fire to a bowl of soup. Soup - a liquid - on fire. 

Luckily the restaurant was inexpensive and as his taste buds slowly adjusted, he discovered the food was borderline edible as long as he chose the most simple items on the menu. He wasn't winning at life by any stretch of the imagination, but he was surviving. Life wasn’t perfect, of course it wasn’t. Cas was used to feeling like a piece of him was missing whenever he wasn’t with Dean, so he wasn’t expecting to feel magically fulfilled, but he did hope that it would gradually start to hurt less. 

Four weeks in he had applied for every job he could find, but the only offer he’d received was a part time job at an undertaker, which he wasn’t sure he should have applied for in the first place - he had been around enough death to last him several lifetimes. But Cas had discovered that the skills that had made him an excellent soldier and leader in Heaven weren’t entirely transferable to jobs on Earth, which meant that his options were limited. 

His days were spent sitting in the restaurant underneath his home, nursing a cup of coffee and searching local newspapers for work. Luckily the restaurant itself was only really busy on an evening, so he got away with taking up a table for as long as he needed it. He'd even made a friend - three days a week a waitress called Kate would chat with him as much as her shift allowed. 

Kate worked part time at the restaurant as she studied for her psychology degree. She had befriended Cas the moment she had realised how lonely he was - she admitted to always having to rescue strays, which Cas had found mildly offensive, but wasn't in a position to argue. He very much _was_ a stray right now. 

Cas had never hit it off with a random stranger before in his life. When he'd met Dean he had instantly felt a burning attraction and connection, but this low key, uncomplicated, just liking someone wasn't something that he'd experienced before. Usually to like someone he had to be forced to be around them for a few years first, Sam was his case in point. So when Kate served Cas and spoke to him in a matter-of-fact, friendly tone, like they were already friends, he immediately felt comforted. It was a feeling he desperately needed. 

By his sixth week there, he almost felt relaxed around her. She was this kind, friendly, gentle woman, who knew none of his complications. She had no idea that he'd tried his hand at being God and had spectacularly failed. She didn't know that he had allowed that odious boil on the ass of Angel-kind, Metatron, to steal his Grace. She didn't know he had allowed Leviathans to take over his body, and the less said about him working with Crowley the better. Most importantly, she didn't know that he'd confessed his love to the only person he'd ever loved romantically, only to be shunned completely and deemed utterly unworthy. 

Sam was the only person who Cas suspected had any idea of his feelings for Dean, and his sad, pitying looks just served to remind Cas how pathetic he truly was. 

Only once had Kate ever tried to press him on why he was so obviously hiding from something. 

"I had a friend, and I screwed up," Cas admitted. "I needed to leave before I did any more damage." 

"If you're not talking at all, surely you've got nothing to lose now if you try to work things out? What's the worst that could happen?" 

"Everything that needs to be said, has been."

Cas didn't say that what terrified him the most was that if they talked and Dean rejected him even further, he wasn't sure he could cope with everything they'd done, every memory he had being tainted irrevocably. He wasn't an idiot, he knew that what he felt was unreciprocated, but that didn't mean he could cope with having to see it on Dean's face every day. 

The Safe Harbor was built to look like the inside of a boat, and it had taken Cas some time to get used to the nautical theme of his surroundings. It made absolutely no sense to him as there was no sea for miles, but when he'd asked Kate about it she had just laughed, topped up his coffee and not answered his question. 

Cas quickly acclimatised himself. While the sloping walls were all made of dark wood, the place itself was bright and airy at the front where there were large windows. At the back, where Cas preferred to hide away, it was dark, private and felt safe and calming - something he needed while he licked his wounds. 

All along the back wall were small semi-private cabins, each one with comfortable inbuilt, cushioned seats at either side. Each one had a round window that was made to look like the portholes of a ship, and each window looked into a fish tank that ran along the back of the wall half hidden behind the wooden panels. Cas found it oddly soothing to feel like he was in the belly of a sunken ship, far out at sea. The fish that swam past the window were colourful, beautiful in their serenity and Cas found himself almost hypnotised by them as he lost himself in thought each day. There were worse places to mourn the loss of a friendship. 

Each day Cas would go to the same booth, order a cup of coffee and pour over job listings, circling ones that sounded most like they would satisfy him. He'd learned from his mistakes - it wasn't enough anymore to just earn money, he wanted to help people, and while he had no idea how he would go about that, he knew that it was something he would need in his life if he was going to make the most of his next fifty or so years as a human being. 

  
  


Six weeks into his self imposed exile, Cas got a text from Sam. 

**Rock Garden - 9PM!**

Cas frowned at his phone, and Kate, who was sitting opposite him while she ate her lunch, scrunched up her face. 

"What's wrong?" 

"It's Sam. He wants to meet me." 

"The tall one? You like him, don't you?" 

Cas sighed and tipped his phone so that Kate could see the screen. 

"The Rock Garden? Live music not your thing?" 

"I've not really heard any."

"Tonight is the last open air night of the season," Kate said, skewering a chip and popping it into her mouth. "It's a big thing. They've got this huge walled garden with a stage, outdoor bar, tables, chairs - it's awesome. Then they move it all back inside when November hits and it starts to get too cold." 

"Are you going?" 

Kate shook her head. "My weekend with the girls." 

Cas nodded in understanding. Kate and her husband had split amicably two years ago, and her daughters spent three weekends a month with their father. It wasn't ideal, but it meant Kate could study in peace when she wasn't working, and it worked for them. 

Cas sighed. 

"The friend I screwed things up with? It's his favourite place to go." 

"I see." Kate looked thoughtful. "But Tall Guy knows you're avoiding Mystery Man, right?" 

"Tall guy does," Cas agreed. 

"So you've got no reason not to go." 

Cas made a dissatisfied noise in his throat, but picked up his phone again. 

**See you there.**

  
  


After his second change of outfit, Cas was ready to text Sam back to cancel. He'd been forced to buy some new clothes when his Grace had stopped automatically cleaning and repairing his one outfit. He hadn't known what to buy, so had gone for colours that pleased him. Bored of brown, Cas' wardrobe was now a mass of purples, blues, greens, oranges, pinks and reds. Kate had commented that he looked like her children's kindergarten teacher, which hadn't seemed to be an insult, Cas had narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but thanked her. 

Tonight he had gone for a plain blue shirt, underneath a bright blue jumper with two annoyed looking snowmen on it. He'd combed his hair, but hadn't bothered shaving off his now almost beard-like stubble. He'd vowed to shave it off if he ever got invited for a job interview, which at the moment wasn't looking imminent. Maybe he would end up with a beard like that Headmaster in that wizard series that Dean had made him watch last year. He could plait it, maybe use it to hide his Angel blade in.

  
  


Sam and Eileen were already at The Rock Garden when Cas arrived. He made his way through the quiet bar, to the absolutely packed outdoor area and Sam had waved him over with a welcoming grin. One of the many things Cas appreciated about his friendship with Sam was the man's unambiguous fondness for him. There was no second guessing whether or not Sam wanted him around, and for someone who never quite felt like he was wanted by anyone, it was a massive relief for Cas to be regularly reminded that he wasn't there under sufferance. 

Dropping onto a stool that Sam had saved for him, Cas smiled and greeted them, having to shout over the sound of the music. It would have been easier if Sam had learned to sign fluently, then they wouldn't need to shout at all. But although Sam was learning, he wasn't quite there yet. 

Cas picked up the beer that Sam had made sure was waiting for him, and he had to admit that this was the perfect venue for something like this. The walls were high, trees dotted around the edges, full of fairy lights that twinkled prettily in the darkness. The tables were upturned barrels, placed on the paving stones that covered more than three quarters of the garden. The sound from the huge speakers carried well from the band at the back, and the makeshift dance floor was packed, bodies writhing, dancing, jumping, some just swaying and watching the band. 

"This isn't as awful as I thought it might be," Cas admitted, leaning to speak into Sam's ear and signing to Eileen at the same time. 

"We've been coming here every week," Sam shouted back. 

"We're celebrating!" Eileen signed to Cas, holding out her hand for him to see. A beautiful diamond sparkled in the light, simple, elegant and stunning. 

"She proposed!" Sam grinned, pulling Eileen into his side. "With this!" 

Sam held out his hand. On his little finger was a far too small red plastic halloween ring with a spider on it - the kind you would find in a child's party bag, or one of those plastic eggs children seemed inexplicably obsessed with. 

"It's temporary!" Eileen defended. "You weren't really meant to wear it!" 

"It's a symbol of your love for me!"

"Are you saying that my love is cheap and tacky?!" Eileen clutched at her chest dramatically. "How could you?!" 

Cas laughed, before hugging them both in turn, congratulating them warmly. He was so happy for them both - they were well suited and Cas very firmly believed that Sam deserved some uncomplicated happiness in his life. 

It was only half way through his hug with Sam that it finally clicked. He froze. How hadn't he noticed it straight away? How hadn't he heard it the second he'd stepped foot into the garden?

"Sam?" he asked, turning slowly to face the stage.

"Something to live for," Sam explained, simply, watching Cas carefully. "It's just a set on Friday and Saturday nights." 

The voice that had reached his ears was beautiful, gravelly, unbelievably sexy and horrifyingly familiar. 

As his eyes landed on the man standing at the front of the stage, Cas felt like the ground had shifted under his feet. Dean wasn't looking at him - there were too many people in between them and he was obviously pretty lost in his own world as he sang. Both hands were on the microphone, enjoyment on his face as he belted out the words to a song that was unfamiliar to Cas. The crowd danced, cheered, sang along, all somehow still carrying on, unaware that Cas' entire world had come to a standstill.

Sam's hand on his shoulder made him jump and reflexes honed by a lifetime as a warrior, Sam's wrist was in his grip and twisted behind his back before Cas had realised what he was doing. 

"Shit, Cas! Let go!" 

Cas let go instantly and backed away from Sam, eyes still on the stage. 

"Why did you ask me here?" 

"Because you're family too, and this is a way to celebrate with all of you. And I thought that if you saw Dean, you might change your mind and talk to him." 

"Sam, do you know what happened?" Cas said, picking his drink up and putting it straight back down when he realised his hands were shaking. "Do you know why I can't even look Dean in the eye anymore?" 

Sam shook his head. "Dean won't talk about it." 

"I told him I was in love with him." 

Cas felt the now familiar mix of relief at saying the words out loud, and the all consuming ache that he assumed came with all unrequited love. 

When Cas tore his eyes away from Dean as the band changed to a slower song that Cas vaguely recognised, Sam was nodding his head, not a hint of surprise on his face. 

"And he panicked?" Sam asked. Cas wondered for a moment how long Sam had known.

"No, not really," Cas sighed. "He seemed more angry than anything else, afterwards at least."

Dean had an acoustic guitar in his hands, his fingers sliding over the strings in a way that seemed almost tender to Cas as he watched. He was singing about being a simple man, which Cas found particularly ironic as Dean was anything but. Seeing Dean in the flesh after all this time was like finally having a drink of water after being parched for weeks. He struggled to tear his eyes away, even though he knew he had to leave, knew that it wasn't doing him any good. 

"Cas, he's been distraught. He said he'd leave you alone when you left, and I think he has?" 

Cas nodded. Not one missed phone call, even though Cas had stopped himself blocking his number. Eileen reached for his hand and squeezed it reassuringly, before letting go and slipping off her stool, disappearing into the crowd, presumably to either use the toilets or get more drinks. 

"But he's barely sleeping, barely eating," Sam continued. "You want him to want to live again, yeah? You want him to be happy. Don't you think having his best friend back might help?" 

Cas downed his drink. There wasn't enough alcohol in this bar to get him through this. 

"He doesn't want me," Cas spelled out, his teeth gritted. "I'd have been happy just being his friend, but I destroyed any chance of that and now I have to live with the consequences."

He was halfway to the door when Sam called to him. 

"Cas, come back!" 

He spun on his heel to look at Sam who was pushing his way through the crowd to get to him, and instead his eyes were drawn back to the stage, where Dean had finally noticed him. Their eyes met and locked, Dean somehow managing to keep singing, keep playing, seemingly on automatic pilot as his eyes burned into Cas, freezing him in place. 

_I love you. I can't stop loving you and it's killing me._

"Don't go, Cas," Sam said, his head appearing in Cas' vision, blocking his view of Dean. It seemed to break the spell and Cas felt like he could take a breath again. "Dean doesn't have a break for half an hour. Just have a drink with us?" 

"I don't know what made you think it was going to be helpful to spring this on me, but I'm going to guess that Dean had no idea I was going to be here either?" 

Sam shook his head, guilt written in the grimace on his lips. 

Cas rolled his eyes. God save them all from well meaning friends. 

"Congratulations on your engagement, Sam. Don't try to pull anything like this again." 

  
  


Cas had been home for fifteen minutes, his TV on but his eyes staring unseeingly at it, when:

**Please don't blame Sam for tonight. He's an idiot, but he was trying to help me. He feels really bad.**

Cas stared at the text. Replying would be incredibly stupid, would undo weeks of being strong, not giving in. But…

He read the text again, running his thumb over the words on the screen. Seeing Dean tonight had made a mess of him, and all the barriers he had managed to erect were crumbling, falling apart. The ache in his chest was overwhelming. He missed him so damn much. 

His phone buzzed again 

**I won't text again after this, I promise. I get that you hate me and I'll leave you be. I just need you to know that if you ever need help, you can call me. You take care, alright?**

Cas swallowed. How could Dean think he hated him? How could he sound so damn caring and kind when Cas needed him to be horrible, so he wouldn't be tempted to go back?

His fingers moving quickly over the keys, he pressed send before he could over think it and stop himself. 

**_I don't hate you. I could never hate you._ **

Cas lost count of the times he checked his phone that night. When it hit 3am and he was still waiting for a reply, he stomped across his apartment to the microwave, opened the door to it and shut his phone inside so he couldn't check it for the hundredth time. He was tempted to turn it on and watch his phone explode. 

True to his word, it seemed that Dean really was going to leave him be.


	5. Never Say Goodbye

The next day he was back in The Safe Harbor in his usual spot, attempting to draw comfort from familiarity. This booth was his favourite entirely because it had two portholes instead of one, so Cas could see twice as many of the multicoloured fish as they swam by. Usually watching the fish soothed him, but not today. 

"There's an aquarium about an hours drive away," Kate said, peeling the crust off her toastie and putting it on the edge of her plate piece by piece. "I take the kids every year and you're welcome to come with us next time. There's this tunnel that you can walk under, and all these sharks and stingrays swim over you. I bet you'd love it." 

Cas looked up from the job application he was painstakingly filling out. It was his third today - two for care home jobs, taking care of the elderly residents, and this last one was for a job at an animal shelter. His people skills weren't technically rusty anymore, but the idea of helping animals appealed to him. They were far less complicated than humans. 

"I think I'd like that," he said with a small smile. It wasn't Kate's fault that he was feeling utterly despondent today. 

"So are you going to tell me how your date with Tall Guy went? You've been off all morning." 

"It was not a date, and it did not go well."

_Understatement._

The jingle of a bell that signaled the arrival of customers saved Cas from having to expand on that and he was grateful. Besides, he needed to concentrate. He was struggling with the 'experience' section of the form. Did interrogating a cat count as experience with animals? 

Kate slid out of the booth, abandoning her half mutilated toastie and swiping at the crumbs on the corner of her mouth before trotting over to greet her new customer. 

"Good afternoon!" she greeted cheerfully. “It’s pretty quiet at the moment, so any table is fine, sir. Breakfasts are finished now, so I'll just grab a lunch menu for you."

Cas barely registered the footsteps that signalled someone getting closer to him. In all the time he'd been coming here no one had ever bothered him. Actually, apart from Kate and her boss, no one had even spoken to him. It didn't seem likely that anyone would go out of their way to do so now. 

“I think I’ll sit here,” a deep, familiar voice drawled. 

Cas looked up sharply and felt his heart rate immediately pick up. _Fuck._

Seeing him from a distance last night had almost felt unreal to Cas. He'd seemed different under the lights, guitar in his hands, that gravelly voice of his filling Cas' senses, hypnotic and overwhelming everything else until there was nothing else but Dean. It was so far removed from the Dean he saw in the Bunker, saw fighting monsters and joking around with his brother, that he could almost tell himself that none of it had been real. This Dean though? He was unmistakably real and unmistakably _here._

His hair was darker than usual, spiked, wet and messy instead of perfectly styled like it usually was. He looked like he’d taken a hasty shower and then anxious fingers had been run through it over and over again. Cas wondered if he'd taken a woman home last night after his set, hence being so recently washed. Maybe it wasn't Dean's fingers that had run through it at all? 

Cas let his gaze drift over Dean's face and he was surprised to see the undisguised pain in his moss-coloured eyes as Dean looked back at him. Their eyes locked and held for a second too long and Cas swallowed. He couldn't read Dean's face or work out what he was thinking, but the dark shadows underneath his eyes showed just how badly he'd been sleeping - Sam wasn't lying about that. Had he been like this before Cas had arrived, or had Cas done this to him? A pang of guilt hit him.

As Dean helped himself to the seat Kate had vacated moments before, he shot her a false smile that didn't make it to his eyes. 

"Thanks for keeping it warm for me." His tone insinuated that she'd been keeping far more than just the seat warm and to Kate's credit she didn't react with anything more than a polite smile as she picked up the plate with the other half of her sandwich on it. 

"Kate, this is Dean," Cas introduced tersely, anticipating a conversation with Dean that he wouldn't enjoy. "Dean, Kate." 

"Kate," Dean acknowledged with a nod. 

"Pleased to meet you Dean," she said, smiling at him, but the look of concern on her face was not fading. "I'll leave you two gentlemen to talk." 

"Thanks," Cas managed, throwing an apologetic look at her retreating back.

Dean smelled of freshly applied aftershave and the familiar cedar smelling body wash he’d used ever since Cas had first met him all these years ago. The subtle scent that was so very Dean surrounded Cas and even with his diminished senses, it was doing things to him that no mere smell should. 

_Oh Dean._ _If you don't want me, why can't you just let me go?_

"She seems friendly." Dean leaned back in his seat. A casual observer would think he was relaxed as he purposely spread himself out in the booth, like he always did. Cas had never known anyone take up so much space just sitting, but Dean's hands were clenched in tight fists in the way they always did when he was in a particularly tense situation. He wasn’t as comfortable as he was trying to convince Cas he was, and part of Cas yearned for those evenings sitting around the table at the bunker, drinking and laughing together, relaxed and happy, before Dean had any idea that Cas was in love with him. 

"She's not your type," Cas lied. Kate was exactly his type. Dark, pretty, intelligent and not afraid to stand up for herself. But she was the only thing Cas currently had that was unconnected to Dean, and Cas didn't want to be able to picture them together when Dean undoubtedly got her into bed. Very few women could resist when he put all his charm to the job of getting someone naked. Cas had a startling thought that if Dean had ever turned that sort of attention on him he would have turned into a mess with embarrassing speed. Maybe it was a good thing that he hadn't. 

Dean rubbed his chin, which usually signalled that he was about to try to have a serious conversation. Cas watched as the stubble scraped against the tips of Dean's fingers as they dragged over the tiny hairs. He wondered what it would feel like if he touched them, let the tips of his fingers slide against Dean's jaw. Would it be soft or rough? What would it be like to kiss him? He'd never kissed anyone with stubble before - how different would it feel? 

Seriously, what was wrong with him? Cas suddenly felt tremendously grateful that Dean had never been able to read his thoughts, or their friendship wouldn’t have lasted hours, let alone the years that it had. 

"Seems like she might be _your_ type though," Dean observed dryly, still on the subject of Kate. 

Well, as the only type he had ever had was sitting across from him now, achingly sexy in one of what must be an endless supply of flannel shirts, Cas severely doubted it. 

"What do you want, Dean?" Cas asked with a sigh. He didn’t have the energy for this.

"Well now you ask, a coffee would be great," Dean said, raising his arm to signal Kate back over. "Anything for you?" 

"I'm fine," Cas said sourly.

Kate came over with a notepad in her hand, her eyes taking in Cas' obvious misery and Dean's barely bitten back anger. 

"Everything okay?" Kate asked, shooting Cas a meaningful look, as if asking him to just say the word and she'd throw Dean out herself. Cas let himself enjoy the mental image. 

"Oh we're just dandy," Dean said with a fake half smile. "I'd like a coffee please. Strong. And I wouldn't object if you put a shot or three of whisky in there too." 

Kate's eyebrows shot up. 

"Anything for the jolly green giant?" Dean asked Cas, indicating to his bright green jumper. 

"I apologise for my friend," Cas said, annoyance finally showing. "He's an ass."

"Oh, so now I'm your friend, am I? Good to know." Dean's eyes were steely. 

"I also said you were an ass."

Dean shrugged, unconcerned. 

"Just the coffee then," Kate said, backing away from their table. 

"Yes. Thank you," Cas said, being polite while pointedly glaring at Dean.

"With whisky," reminded Dean, before turning back to Cas. “I didn’t realise I was cramping your style,” 

Dean picked up the menu, pretending to pore over it. Cas rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"Is this really helpful?" Cas asked, annoyance evident in his tone. Dean ignored him.

"I mean really - not even two months human and you've pulled one seriously hot babe. I thought you were avoiding me - you could have just said that you'd scored. I’d have understood." Dean winked in an overt, comical manner, but Cas knew Dean well enough after all these years to know that there was no humour behind it. Cas wasn’t going to play along and humour him.

"She's a friend," Cas growled, "and I thought you said you were going to leave me alone now." 

"That was when I thought you hated me. A little birdie tells me you don't." 

" _I_ told you that." 

"If only you meant it!"

"I…" 

Kate appeared next to them with the ridiculously alcoholic coffee, cream and bowl of packeted sugar.

Leaning over to top up Cas' cup as well, she said, " _I_ like your jumpers!" and shot Dean a defiant look. 

Dean held his hands up in mock surrender.

"She's protective," he observed when she'd left, looking at Cas, gauging his reaction. 

"Maybe she just doesn't like you?" 

Dean nodded as if this could well be true, and then peered at the newspaper adjacent to Cas' elbow, opened at the job section with various ones circled. 

"Some of these jobs are pretty far away," he observed. "Visiting your new girlfriend from all that distance will be a pain in the ass.”

"Dean, stop," Cas said tiredly. 

Dean clenched his jaw and the fake smile fell from his face to be replaced by genuine pain and determination. 

"No, Cas. You and me, we're gonna talk this out."

"I don't think talking will help this situation."

"How can you possibly know that when we haven't tried?" Dean asked. "I've tried to keep away from you, to leave you be. I've not called, not turned up when I've known where you were meeting Sam. I left you alone because I thought it was what you wanted." 

"What if it _is_ what I want?" Cas challenged.

Dean reached across the table and put his hand on Cas' arm, making him jump and look up from his lap to meet Dean's eyes. The heat radiated from his hand and Cas stared at it as he assessed this new sensation. His skin was so much more sensitive now he was human, and Cas had to fight to stop his eyes fluttering closed at Dean's touch. 

"You really hate me that much?" His red rimmed eyes were filled with so much pain that it brought Cas back to himself and all he wanted to do was hold his friend. "Really? Because I'll go, Cas. If that's what you want, I'll go." 

Cas looked helplessly at Dean. He didn't want him to go. He never wanted him to go and Dean knew it. 

"Dean…" 

At the plaintive call of his name, Dean's fingers tightened on Cas' arm. 

"So help me, Cas," he growled. "We are gonna sort this out!" 

"There isn't anything _to_ sort out," Cas denied, pulling his arm away in an attempt to save his sanity. He grabbed the bowl that held the tiny individual packets of sugar, toying with them just for something to do with his hands. He daren't shred the napkins here - Kate would kill him. 

"You're fricking exhausting when you get like this," Dean sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands until he saw stars. 

"I overstepped," Cas admitted, looking down. "I'm sorry for that. I tried to put it right by leaving, but I feel like nothing I do is right." 

"Have I asked you to leave? Did I tell you I didn't want you living with us? Living with me?" Dean took a breath and when Cas didn't respond he carried on. "I'm sorry for what I said all those weeks ago. I shouldn't have lashed out at you and I regretted it the moment I did, but dammit Cas, I was really hurt."

"I know I've made mistakes," Cas said softly. "The last thing I wanted to do was hurt you. If you want to shout at me, get your anger out, I deserve it. I owe you that." . 

Dean stared at Cas for a full minute without saying anything. Then, "Is that what you think of me? Is that what you think I want, why you've been avoiding me?" 

In a moment of complete honesty, laying himself open for Dean to tear apart so easily if he chose to, Cas answered from his soul. “I’ve been avoiding you so I don’t have to see the way you look at me. So I don’t have to see how little regard you have for me. So I don’t have to see how you really feel about me.”

“Cas… c'mon. You _know_ me.”

“I can’t keep pretending that it doesn’t hurt me when you dismiss me, when you send me away, when you act like my very presence is an inconvenience.”

“I thought we sorted that out. I was an idiot and I treated you like crap. I'm sorry - I let anger just take over and I don't know why I keep doing it. I wouldn't blame you for not wanting me around anymore, but we _did_ talk and we were friends again. Things were good, weren't they?”

“And then I confessed my feelings and -”

“Cas!” Dean interrupted, raising his voice. “That isn’t why I was angry with you.”

“Then why?”

"How long were you in the Empty for before Jack pulled you out?" Dean's voice was now quiet, so low that Cas had to lean in to hear him. 

"A few days. I'm unsure. Time is different there."

"Right. And then how long were you with Jack, doing whatever father-son bonding shit you guys have been doing?" 

"It's hard to say - a few months of your time on earth, but more for me. Jack wanted to bring back all the worlds that Chuck had destroyed - restore them to what they were before. That took time."

Dean just looked at him expectantly, waiting. When Cas didn't seem to get it he sighed and tried again. 

"And you didn't think that I might quite like to know that you were okay? You couldn't have taken the time to drop in, answer a prayer, even just once to tell me what happened?" 

"I was with Jack…" 

"It would have been a minute of your damn time, Cas. That's a cowardly as shit excuse." 

"I came back! More than once! You and Sam were free, hanging out in bars like you did before things got complicated. Hunting, drinking, women - there was no place for me anymore and that's okay. It wasn't meant to be forever."

"Wasn't it? I'm sorry - I didn't get the memo," Dean said sarcastically, dragging his fingers through his hair. His knee was jiggling under the table, bouncing like Dean had a load of pent up nervous energy that was just desperate to escape. 

"I didn't even realise you were struggling until it was too late." 

Cas looked down at his hands where they lay on his lap, hiding in case Dean touched him again and he finally just broke. He should have known Dean was struggling. He shouldn't have just assumed he was fine - all the signs had been there, the drinking, the constant hunting. 

The first time he’d dropped in on Dean was no more than a few days after Jack had pulled him from The Empty. He’d not thought about what he was going to say, he had just known that he needed to see his friend so much he had ached with it. 

Cas had found him quickly enough, in the very back of a pool bar a mile or so south of the Bunker. His first glimpse of him, wearing that blue and green checked shirt, a few days of stubble on his jaw, it had made Cas’ stomach flip. He’d wanted to run to him, throw his arms around him and not let go. He was scared, so fucking scared, but this was Dean - surely he’d be happy to see him, whatever he’d thought of Cas’ confession? But the Angel had hovered in the doorway, nervously biting his lip and twisting his hands. 

A burst of laughter had pulled him out of his reverie - Dean’s laughter. His head was thrown back in one of those rare moments of true amusement. It was the kind of laugh that Cas had clung to like a prize when he’d managed to win it and make it fall from Dean’s lips. And there was this stranger, this woman in a ridiculously tight blue dress who Dean couldn’t have known for more than a few days, and it was more likely to be just a few hours, and she could make Dean laugh like this, like he didn’t have a care in the world, like he hadn’t just lost his best friend. 

It wasn’t that Cas had wanted Dean to suffer. On the contrary, Cas never wanted Dean to suffer for a single moment of his life. But Dean acting like his loss didn't matter - it stung. He wasn’t a bad person because it had stung, he reasoned. He was missed so little that Dean was flirting, laughing and seemed far happier than when he'd had Cas by his side. 

Jack had appeared by Cas' side, a comforting hand on his shoulder. 

"They're free now," Jack had said simply. 

He'd felt like a fool for thinking that Dean would be mourning him, thinking about him. Their friendship had always meant more to Cas than it had to Dean, of course it had, so why would Dean not be celebrating life now he was free, why would he be killing himself trying to break Cas out of the Empty, when he didn’t need him anymore? The fight was over. 

"We've got work to do," Jack had reminded him. 

As they had left the bar and Cas took one last long look, Dean was bending over the pool table. The woman in the blue dress had both hands on his rear as he wiggled it in the air in an exaggerated fashion. Cas hadn’t come back for months after that visit, and luckily Jack had kept him too busy for him to have a chance to wallow. 

Lost in reliving how lost and unwanted he had felt that night, Cas had drifted out of the conversation. He jumped back to reality only when Dean raised his voice. 

"A little focus here, Cas," he said, clicking his fingers in front of his face. "Whatever you think you saw, it doesn’t excuse you not having the common decency to let me know you were okay. I’d have let you know. It would have been the first thing I would have done!”

“Dean, it was over.”

“What was over? Our friendship? Because it didn’t feel very fucking over to me. Did it feel like it to you?” In his frustration, Dean's voice had raised even more and it was loud enough to have the only other table of customers looking over at them. Cas winced and threw a glance at Kate, who was studiously looking away, pretending not to be listening, looking anxious. 

"You were living your life and I had to help Jack," Cas said, lowering his voice in the hopes that Dean would take the hint and do the same. "It was a huge change for him to go from being a kid who couldn’t fasten his own shoelaces to being God." 

"Do you think that I don't get that? Did you think that I would have insisted you stayed with me instead of helping our kid? You know me better than that! I know you need to put Jack first, but it would have taken you two minutes to tell me you were okay! I don't think that's too much to ask!"

"I wasn't needed!" Cas growled, finally snapping and getting to his feet. Anger rose in him, fierce and hot, boiling inside him, bubbling to the surface. He didn't know if he was going to run or grab Dean by the shoulders and slam him into the wall. 

"Wasn’t needed?!" Dean banged his hands down onto the table so that the coffee cups jumped and spilled. “ _I_ needed you, Cas. I've never needed you more in my life!”

Kate was walking towards them, worry and determination written all over her face. 

"Guys…" she began. 

"I know," Cas said, raising a trembling hand and squeezing her shoulder, ignoring the narrowing of Dean's eyes as he did. "I'm sorry. We'll take this outside." 

“Excellent idea,” Dean said, throwing some money on the table and getting to his feet. He turned to Kate, eyeing Cas' hand on her shoulder before lifting his gaze to meet hers. 

"I'm sorry. You seem nice. You're good for Cas." He closed his eyes for a moment, regret written all over his face. "I shouldn't have come." 

He was gone before Cas could even register what was happening. He stood there for one beat, two. And then with one more hasty apology to Kate, he went after Dean.

The restaurant would normally have been fifteen minutes away from the Bunker when walking normally, but Dean hadn't been walking normally, and by the time Cas had finally caught up to him he was almost at the entrance. 

"Dean!" he called, gasping for breath. This was ridiculous - was this all any of them did these days, run after each other until they couldn't breathe anymore? 

"Go home, Cas!" Dean called back, leaning his back against the door of the Bunker, letting it support him as he caught his breath. 

"No!" Cas finally reached him. "You want to do this, that's fine. You can destroy every good memory we have of each other - go ahead! I'm here. I'm listening!" 

Dean stared, horrified. 

"How could you ever have loved me when you think this fucking little of me?" Dean asked. "I'm genuinely curious. If I'm that much of an asshole, why me? Why not Sam? He's a good guy, he's obviously better than me. Why not him?" 

"I'm sorry, would that make it easier for you?" Cas asked sarcastically. "Next time I'll be sure to consult you before allowing myself to feel anything for anyone!" 

"Why didn't you come back for me when Jack set you free? If you cared so damn much, why did you abandon me just like every fucker else has?" 

Tears shone in Dean's eyes and the anger that had risen so quickly in Cas seemed to fade as quickly as it had started. 

_Oh Dean…_

"I didn't… I didn't abandon you. We said goodbye." 

" _You_ said goodbye! I didn't even get the chance to process what the hell was happening before you'd gone!" 

"Fine. _I_ said goodbye," Cas conceded. "It was over." 

"Stop saying that!" Dean lunged forward and grabbed Cas by the shoulders, giving him one firm shake. "Stop saying it was over! It wasn't over! Nothing is over when it's us! We go after each other, we find each other! In Heaven, in Hell, in Purgatory! We fight and we find each other and we don't give up!" 

He looked at Cas, shaking his head miserably. "When did you decide to change the programme?”

"You changed the programme when you defeated God and won your freedom! You can live your own lives now, the way you want. No Demons, no monsters, no Angels." 

"Call me stupid Cas, but I don't see much free will in me not having a choice in whether or not we're friends! That's some fucked up logic." 

"I didn't see you going out of your way to find me," Cas said, finally letting his hurt over it show. "You might not want me to say it, but you gave up because it _was_ over." 

“If it was over, then why didn’t you mind your own and leave me dead?” Dean snapped, spinning away from Cas and looking a lot like he was fighting hard not to punch Cas in the face. "I was _done_ with this shit." 

“Why do you fucking think?” Cas snarled, anger and hurt radiating from him as he advanced on Dean, pressing him into the door. "Because I couldn't stand the thought of you dying before you got a chance to live! Because I care about you, Dean! If I was lost, would you have left me for dead? Oh wait, silly question - _you did!_ ”

"I did what now?" Dean's eyes narrowed. 

"You left me in the Empty! You had no idea if Jack had rescued me - you didn't even _try_ to save me!" 

"Oh, didn't I?" Dean shook his head incredulously, his voice dangerously quiet. "This is fucking insane." 

He yanked open the door to the Bunker and stormed inside. Cas hesitated for a moment, then growled under his breath and followed him. 

They walked straight past Sam and Eileen who were playing a board game, and both ignored them completely, until Dean got half way down the hallway to his bedroom and stopped dead in his tracks. Cas barrelled into his back, swearing at Dean and apologising to him at the same time, which pretty accurately summed up Cas' feelings towards him. 

"You know what?" Dean said, grasping Cas' wrist in his hand. He dragged him back up the hallway and into the living area again. 

"I see you've found Cas," Sam said, giving Eileen a wide eyed pointed look that plainly said, ' _these guys have issues'._ He picked up the little silver dog piece and moved it to Boardwalk with a triumphant bow as he counted his paper money out loud, slowly and smugly. 

Cas stood next to Dean, his wrist still held painfully tightly in his grip, wondering what the hell Dean was doing. Did he want to play Monopoly? Now? Really? 

"Dean…" he began. 

"Firstly, you're in the way," Dean said to Sam, ignoring Cas and shoving the Monopoly board to the side. Little cards, houses and hotels scattered everywhere, to a cry of horror from Sam and a suspiciously pleased smirk from Eileen. 

"And secondly-" he picked up the small silver dog that was now on its side on the table. "The dog is mine. _I_ am the damn dog! Me! You're the iron!" He dropped the dog piece into his pocket and glowered at Sam like he had committed a heinous crime. Then without waiting for a response, Dean pulled Cas the rest of the way over to the table. 

"Do you see these names?" he asked Cas, brushing aside the board game debris with his hand to reveal the names carved into the wooden table. "Sam and I did that the night after we lost you. We got drunk off our heads, cried like babies, and I carved your name into this table; yours, our mother's, Jack's; _Our family._ Then I drank myself into a stupor so I didn't have to keep remembering you were gone!" 

Cas looked at his name on the table and a lump came to his throat.

"Only at some point I had to sober up and then I _remembered_ again. So yeah, you might have caught moments where I was coping, where I was trying to be normal again, but you have no idea how much losing you fucked me up." 

"You're family, Cas," Sam added, seeming to realise that sorting things out with Cas was more important than beating Dean over the head with a Monopoly board for ruining his winning streak.

Cas shot Sam a grateful look, then closed his eyes and took a steadying breath before turning to speak to Dean, who was no longer there. 

"Are you going to go after him?" Eileen asked, prompting Cas, who seemed to be hesitating. He felt both moved and stupid at the same time, and he had no idea what to do or say to make any of this better.

"Apparently it's what we do," Cas eventually said, resignedly. "Sam, can-"

"Cas!" Dean was standing in the doorway, gesturing impatiently for Cas to follow him, before turning and marching back towards his room.

Cas raised his eyes to the ceiling and counted to ten.

"Castiel, your boyfriends calling!" Sam said in a shrill falsetto, grinning at Eileen and flicking imaginary hair over his shoulder in an exaggerated manner. 

If looks could kill, Sam would be sprawled over the table on top of his ruined Monopoly game, clutching at his chest. As it was, Cas had to settle for his most venomous glare as he strode from the room after Dean, answering what had very obviously been a summons. 

"I hope those kids remember to use protection," Sam stage whispered loudly to Eileen, earning himself an eye roll and a playful slap. 

"Fuck you, Sam!" Cas called back. 

"Dean might object!"

Occasionally Cas wondered why he kept saving these people.


	6. Arms

Cas had walked down this hallway a thousand times before, but this was the first time he had ever done so with quite this level of trepidation. Two steps away from being inside Dean's bedroom his legs seemed to be disobeying him entirely, and instead of going through the door and into the room, he flattened himself to the wall and closed his eyes. What was he doing? Dean was right, this was insane.

Maybe they could just agree to put it all behind them, agree to meet up for a quick drink every second Wednesday and forget any of the rest of it ever happened? What uncomfortable confession of love? What leaving him for dead in an infinite mystical void? 

The loud ringing that came from his pocket made him wince. It wasn’t as if being directly outside Dean’s door was a particularly clever hiding place, but there had been a tiny, minuscule chance that Dean hadn’t been aware that he was out there until his ringtone had given him away.

Cas pulled the phone from his pocket and narrowed his eyes at the name on the screen.

“Dean,” he greeted, flatly.

There was a pause, then- “So… how are you?”

Cas could feel his blood pressure rising from sheer exasperation. “Have you completely lost your mind?”

“I’d say that’s a distinct possibility.”

“Well, they say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who plays hide and seek like a toddler. Where are you going to hide next, in the corner with your hands covering your eyes?” The tone was teasing more than mocking, but Cas still felt like throwing things at him.

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Don't be a stranger!”

“Hilarious.”

Dean was sitting on his bed, phone in hand, eyebrows raised, his look challenging. He was the most frustrating, infuriating human being that Cas had ever met, and Cas loved him completely.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Dean drawled in greeting. 

“I’d have come sooner, but I had this annoying friend call me out of the blue.”

“I’ve heard he’s more charming and hilarious than annoying,” Dean said, fluttering his eyelashes. He was nervous and his levity hid nothing. Was he nervous enough that he might actually agree to the every second Wednesday thing and just let Cas go back to his apartment to drown his sorrows at home with Nigel? 

Obviously in similar need of Dutch courage, Dean had got to his feet, grabbing a bottle of Wild Turkey that was sitting on his bedside table. He half filled two tumblers with the amber liquid, handing one to Cas who was careful to not let their fingers brush.

“Thanks.” Cas swirled the Whisky in his glass and then drained half of it in one go.

Dean watched him steadily, then did the same with his drink.

“Top up?”

Cas nodded. It didn’t take much to get him drunk now his Grace was running on empty, but this wasn’t a stone cold sober sort of conversation he was about to have. He needed to stay in control, detached, calm and not let this turn into another argument and alcohol usually had a tendency to make him feel blessedly numb. 

His glass now topped up, he sat down carefully on the leather sofa that was conveniently as far away from Dean that he could get. Taking another mouthful of the burning liquid, Cas broke the silence.

“I’m sorry Dean, I didn’t know about the names. That was very thoughtful.”

“It’s not about the names, Cas. It’s about the fact that I didn’t just write you off the moment you disappeared. It’s about you having a little faith in me. After all these years, all we’ve been through together, did you really think I’d just shrug and put it behind me?”

“You seemed to be reasonably content when I looked in on you. I apologise if that wasn’t the case.” Cas took another mouthful of his drink. How long would it take to calm his nerves? He was ridiculously on edge. 

“I was absolutely fucking devastated, Cas. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I’ve got some pretty fucked up coping mechanisms for dealing with the shitstorm that is my life. Every person who has ever made the mistake of getting close to me has been taken from me at some point. So yeah, I buried it. How else was I supposed to get up in the morning?”

Dean ran his fingers through his hair over and over again - it was a sure sign that he was close to breaking point and Cas felt his legs tensing with the effort of not going over to him. He couldn’t get close - he couldn’t trust himself not to give himself away.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Cas said awkwardly, wanting to give them both an out. "It's done with. We can… We can be friends again. If you want." 

They could have this drink and pretend everything was back to normal and maybe Dean would stop looking like his world was falling apart.

“It matters, Cas! You have no idea what I went through after you disappeared - no fucking idea! I prayed to Jack over and over to bring you back. I prayed to _you_ every single night on the off chance you could hear me and it might have kept you sane!”

“You prayed to me?” Cas frowned, his resolution to stay detached from the conversation wavered. 

“Yes! And you ignored every single one.”

“I would never ignore your prayers, Dean.” This wasn’t making sense. Cas put his drink down.

“Well you fucking did. I prayed, I begged and you ignored me. At the time I was sure you were in the Empty, but then I found out you’d been running free for months and just didn’t give a fuck about me, so can you see why I was just a tiny bit upset?”

“I don’t understand,” Cas said, genuinely at a loss. His head was spinning. Wherever he was, even off-world, he should be able to hear prayers. It was like a direct line right to him, and it had never failed him before. However inconvenient the timing and irreverent the wording, he’d always heard Dean's prayers, as inappropriate as they usually were. When he was in meetings, at war, in the middle of conversations or battles, he'd always heard Dean’s words to him.

“Sam and I tried everything to get to you,” Dean continued. Now he’d opened up, it seemed like he couldn’t stop. “I tried to bribe, blackmail and threaten Demons and Reapers into stepping just a single foot into the Empty to try to reach you, but no one would come near us after we’d defeated Chuck.”

“You tried to rescue me?”

“Cas, I _always_ try to rescue you.” Dean looked at him like he had never heard such a stupid question. 

“I was told…” Cas stopped, feeling suddenly horribly disloyal.

“What were you told?”

Cas shook his head mutely and Dean sighed.

“I saw you not long before you died,” Cas confessed after a moment. “I was there with Jack, and we saw you, _heard_ you. You told Sam you couldn’t stay sad, thinking about us, that you had to live your life.”

“Because I didn’t want Sam falling apart when I died. I knew my time was coming, and when it happened, when it was my time to die, I wanted Sam to know it was okay to move on.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Fucking _oh_!” 

Dean sighed and got to his feet. 

“I’ve spent weeks thinking about it since you came back,” Dean said, walking over to the leather sofa. He sat down next to Cas, close enough for their knees to brush. “Do you know what I think?”

Dean leaned in far too close for Cas to feel in any kind of control anymore. 

“What do you think?” Cas asked, his eyes on their touching knees, curiously intimate in the small room. He needed some space to breathe, but either Dean didn’t realise, or he was refusing to move away on purpose. 

“At first I really believed you had moved on. I figured you’d found your place by Jack’s side in Heaven, that you were living the life you were created for before Chuck had you pull my ass out of Hell.”

“I never wanted the life I was created for.” Not since the moment he had set eyes on Dean. Meeting Dean had made him want things for himself for the very first time. 

“I felt like I was such an idiot, because I’d stopped thinking of you as this great Celestial Being, and you were just… just Cas, my friend. Except you weren’t meant for keeping me company on road trips and being my drinking buddy. I was a fool to think you’d be happy with that forever. You’re a freaking Angel of the Lord and somehow I’d forgotten what that meant.”

“I would have been satisfied -”

"Fuck off with that. No you wouldn't. I wouldn't have been either," Dean interrupted impatiently. 

Cas was fairly sure Dean had moved even closer to him - his entire leg was now pressed against his from ankle to thigh. He was so busy panicking that his mind seemed to be processing Dean’s words on a delay. Dean was already speaking again when Cas thought to question _why_ Dean wouldn’t be satisfied.

“That’s what I thought at the start,” Dean said, and even without looking up Cas could feel Dean's eyes on him. “But I’ve had plenty of time on my own to think, and I’ve realised that it isn’t that at all.”

“Dean… don’t,” Cas whispered. He didn’t even know what Dean was going to say, but the potential of what he _could_ say terrified him.

“I think you were scared," Dean intoned softly. 

"Why would I be scared?" Cas scoffed, hating the waver in his voice that only served to give him away completely 

"You were so sure that I’d react badly to your confession, that you threw it at me when you knew you’d never have to face me again and would never have to know how I’d react. Then when Jack set you free and ruined that, you were too terrified to talk to me, so you made excuses.”

Cas got to his feet, desperate to put some space between them. Walking to the open door, his only escape route, he leaned back against it and took a gulp of much needed air. 

_Calm and in control._

“I’m not making excuses,” he denied, fighting to sound steady and sure. “You didn’t need me.”

Dean had followed him, now standing so close to Cas that the former Angel was pressing himself backwards into the door, utterly unable to tear his eyes from Dean’s as they burned into him, seeing everything that Cas was trying to keep hidden.

“I needed you, Cas. You have no fucking idea how much I needed you.” 

Cas closed his eyes as Dean's words caused a physical clenching in his chest. His breath caught and his stomach swooped in the way it used to when he was flying and he'd take a steep dive, letting himself free-fall. 

_Calm and in control. Fuck._

Dean moved even closer to Cas, his body pressing him into the door in a way that made Cas want to tilt his hips and press back against him. Dean's breath was hot against his cheek, and the smell of him, the heat of his body, the sound of Dean's own unsteady breathing - all of it was making Cas feel dizzy. Was Dean doing this on purpose? 

“What are you doing?” Cas asked, hating how choked and breathless he sounded.

“You’re scared,” Dean repeated. “Why?”

Cas shook his head, opening his mouth to deny it again, but unable to find the words. Overwhelmed, he pushed at Dean’s shoulders to give himself some space, but Dean barely moved, refusing to give him it, his fierce gaze not wavering from Cas’ face.

“Not until you tell me why.”

Cas’ heart was pounding, his mouth was dry. 

_Calm and…_

_No._ He wasn't in control. He wanted to scream and more than that, he wanted to spin Dean around and shove him against the door that he was himself trapped against. He needed to kiss him. Not just kiss him, Cas wanted to do so much more than that - he wanted to hold him in place and fuck him until he couldn't remember his own name, let alone what they had been talking about. Cas bit back an oath and turned his head away, his hands clenching in his effort to control himself.

“Cas, you’re shaking,” Dean observed gently, his voice suddenly full of empathy. He reached down and grabbed one of Cas' trembling hands, trapping it between his own palms. Cas pulled his hand back defensively, barely able to stop himself from squirming away entirely. Dean couldn’t see inside his head like this - he wasn't _allowed_ to see any of this. Cas shoved both of his unsteady hands deep into the pockets of his coat. 

“Your whole body is shaking,” Dean said softly. “You can’t hide that.”

Cas let out a panicked puff of air. He pulled his hands from his pockets and placed them on Dean's shoulders instead. He had been so sure that he was going to try to push Dean away from him again. He was strong - not Angel strong now, but he could give Dean a run for his money if he tried. Instead, his treacherous, disobedient body just held tightly onto Dean instead, steadying himself, clinging to him.

"Hey. It's okay," Dean soothed, which made Cas shake his head in response. No, it wasn’t. It wasn't okay. _He_ was anything but okay. 

“Dean, stop,” he choked out. 

“Really?” Dean asked, seriously. “If you really want me to, I will.”

Cas looked up at him, his eyes pleading. He shook his head slowly. He was so scared of what was happening right now that he could barely form a coherent thought. The only thing he was completely sure of was that he didn’t actually want Dean to stop.

Dean tipped his head to the side, watching Cas intently.

“Do you want to know what I would have said to you that night, if you’d have given me the chance?” Dean asked, his voice so low it seemed to vibrate through Cas as it pinned him in place.

“I don’t want to know,” Cas admitted, panic and fear evident in his voice. He'd finally said it, finally admitted it to himself as well as Dean - he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to feel the crushing pain of what Dean might say to him. He could admit now that he _had_ avoided knowing and he was going to keep avoiding it even if it meant running from here and never coming back. He’d move further this time. Moving fifteen minutes away had been a pathetic attempt at starting over. This time he needed to move somewhere Dean would never come looking for him. Wasn’t there an island somewhere that was entirely inhabited by cats? All the antihistamines in the world wouldn’t help Dean find him if he hid there.

“I need to go," Cas whispered, sliding sideways away from Dean, his back still against the door. 

“Stop fucking running away,” Dean hissed. He pushed himself away from the door, away from Cas, giving him the space he needed. Cas took a gulp of air that felt and sounded suspiciously like a sob and he stood there, hyperventilating, desperately trying to slow his breathing down without breaking down entirely. 

“Do you truly think so little of me? So little of yourself? Do you think I don’t care about you?” Dean staring at Cas helplessly, looking like he wanted to come over to comfort him, but not quite daring. 

Cas took another breath. And another. 

"Do you think I was just pretending to care about you all these years?" Dean asked, running his fingers through his hair in frustration, making it stand up in all directions. "Do you think I'm made of stone, Cas?" 

Dean walked over to his bed and dropped heavily onto it, his head falling into his hands as he tried to collect himself. When he looked back up at Cas, his eyes were glistening with unshed tears. 

“Do you know what I did the night you were taken from me?” he asked, his voice so full of emotion that Cas ached to hear it.

“I don’t… I can’t…” Cas shook his head. He didn’t want to hear any more. He felt like he was suffocating. Everything he’d thought he’d known had been a lie and his head was swimming.

“I sat on the floor in that room, exactly where you threw me, and I wept for you. I cried all night, until there weren’t any tears left in me - until I was fucking dry, and then I cried some more.”

“Dean, please…” Dean’s face was crumpling and Cas wanted to wrap his arms around him and never let go. Cas was in front of him now, but he couldn’t remember having moved.

“I sat on the floor, staring at the spot where you made that stupid fucking sacrifice - the spot where you _died,_ Cas. I sobbed your name until the sun came up, until I could finally pull myself together enough to stand up to go and find Sammy.”

“Dean…” This time it was a broken whisper. “I’m sorry.” 

Cas stood in front of Dean, his arms helplessly by his sides. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I don’t know why I couldn’t hear your prayers - I could _always_ hear you before. If I'd have known I'd have come back for you in a heartbeat. I didn't know, Dean. _I didn’t know!_ ”

“You left me, Cas.” Dean’s voice broke on his friend's name. “You left and I didn't get to say goodbye, and it just… it fucking broke me. I couldn’t even hate you for it, because you did it for me. You gave up your life for me. _Again_.”

Dean hid his face in his hands again and Cas’ fought back his own tears. He’d done this. He’d hurt the only person he’d ever loved.

“I’m sorry,” Dean apologised, speaking through his fingers, his voice muffled. “I’m so fucking sorry. For everything. For you having to sacrifice yourself again, for not being able to get you out, for not wanting to go on when you’d given your life so I could. I’m sorry, Cas. I’ll always be sorry." 

"You don't _ever_ have to be sorry," Cas asserted, feeling like his heart was breaking. Tears were escaping from between Dean’s fingers, falling and hitting the floor with little splashes, darkening the carpet wherever they hit. 

“It’s not your fault. I made that deal with The Empty because it was the only way to save Jack. The timing of my death might have been different if I hadn't been trying to save you too, but the outcome was always going to be the same. I was on borrowed time.”

Cas moved as close to Dean as he dared, standing in the space between his open knees. He knew he was too close, but he needed to be - Dean needed him to be. He reached out a hand and lightly, tentatively put it on Dean’s shoulder.

"Every time you and I would sneak off behind the books to talk and drink together, I would wonder if that would be the moment I'd be taken. Every time you made me laugh, I was bracing myself, waiting for The Empty to swoop down and take me. You would hug me and I'd be scared to let myself feel anything at all. It was going to happen eventually."

"I'm sorry, but from where I was standing it looked like you were sacrificing yourself just to save me. It _felt_ like you were doing it for me. Then you fell from Heaven and lost Jack and your wings. You sacrificed everything _._ It wasn’t worth it, Cas. My miserable life wasn't worth your sacrifice."

Cas reached out a shaking hand and slid it down Dean’s cheek, across the roughness of his jaw, cupping his face in his hand. The stubble he’d fantasised about earlier was scratchy against his palm, exactly how he'd imagined it would feel. He caressed his cheek tenderly, tentatively, expecting Dean to push his hand away at any moment.

“Dean, look at me,” Cas begged, ignored his own tears that had started to fall to join Dean’s in staining the beige carpet. “Your life is worth _everything_. I will always choose to save you, whatever the sacrifice. I would fall from Heaven a hundred times over, cast it aside and live an eternity of torture in Hell if it meant saving you.”

Dean didn’t answer, didn’t react to Cas’ thumb caressing his cheek, didn’t look up from his hands at all. Guilt and shame radiated from him and Cas wished that Dean would see himself how Cas saw him, just for a second. The beautiful, strong, clever, kind man who loved harder, cared more than anyone he’d ever met. He was an idiot to ever believe this man would just let him, or anyone he cared about, go - that wasn't who he was. 

“Dean?” Cas let his fingers slide further down his jaw, gripping Dean’s chin gently to tip his face up. Dean’s face came up, but he refused to meet Cas' eyes. Cas took in the tear tracks down Dean’s face, his red rimmed eyes that were so full of shame. Dean was hurting so much and up until now Cas hadn't realised how much worse it had made things when he’d allowed the Empty to take him. This wasn't just anybody he'd left behind, this was Dean, who felt responsible for every death; Dean who believed that no one should care about him, because they would always get hurt, die - or worse; Dean who didn’t feel he was worth any sacrifice, however small. The guilt was drowning them both.

“Do you know why I'll always save you?” Cas asked, his words gentle, his hand still cupping Dean's face. Dean shook his head almost imperceptibly as Cas let his thumb trace over Dean’s cheek to wipe away the tears he found there. 

"It’s because you deserve to be saved," Cas answered, smiling through his own tears at the man in front of him. “You deserve it, Dean. You deserve any sacrifice, any amount of love that is given to you. You always have. And I know you don’t feel it, don’t believe it, but everyone around you knows it too.”

Dean finally met Cas’ eyes and Cas swallowed down the urge to kiss every bit of his pain away. 

“It’s not because of all you’ve done - you’ve saved the world so many times, saved so many people. But it’s not that - it’s not about what you’ve done, it’s about who you are, and who you are is incredible. You are worthy of so much love, and you _are_ loved, Dean. You’re so very loved.”

And with that, a dam seemed to break in Dean. Silent tears turned into sobs that shook his entire body. The months of desolation, the shame, the loss and guilt, all pushed down, hidden deep inside so that his little brother wouldn't see it, so Sam could be happy instead of worrying about him constantly. It had all finally surfaced and it hurt. It hurt so much that Dean was breaking apart in front of Cas' eyes.

“Is it alright if I hug you?” Cas asked hesitantly, looking down at Dean. He was afraid of the answer, afraid of being pushed away. Before his confession he would have just pulled Dean into his arms, but now everything could be read as something else. Every action could be misconstrued as being more than it was, could be turned into something that could make Dean run, even while he was this distressed. Cas held himself tensely, waiting. 

Wordlessly, Dean reached for Cas, his hands curling into the material of his coat, pulling him closer, pulling him down to him. The position was awkward, Cas couldn’t hold him properly and he was towering over him.

“Hang on,” he murmured, sliding his hand around the back of Dean’s neck to steady himself, before dropping easily to kneel between Dean’s legs. He wrapped his arms around Dean’s waist, and Dean immediately pulled him close, burying his nose in his neck. Cas melted into his arms, a whimper escaping his throat as relief and pent up emotion overwhelmed him. 

Cas was hard-wired for rejection, but he wasn’t sure how he would have coped if Dean had pushed him away. Thankful that Dean trusted him enough, needed him enough to let him this close, he stroked his back with one hand, while the other buried itself in his hair, massaging soothingly as Dean’s tears fell, soaking into his collar.

“I’m so sorry that I abandoned you,” Cas murmured, pressing his nose into Dean’s hair, trying to hold back from placing kisses on his hairline. “I knew that it was the one thing you couldn’t handle, and you’re right - I panicked. I told myself that our friendship was over, that it was ruined, and I didn’t even let you speak. I rejected myself on your behalf, and then I left you and told myself that it was what you wanted. Whether I could hear your prayers or not, I should have trusted you. I’m a fool. I hurt you. I did this to you, and I didn’t even realise.”

Dean burrowed his face even deeper into Cas’s neck and Cas finally allowed himself to press a kiss into Dean's hair, half hoping he wouldn’t notice. 

“Every day just feels empty,” Dean finally said, his voice thick with tears and muffled by the material of Cas’ coat and jumper. “I can handle pain, I’m used to it. But not this emptiness all the time."

Cas winced. He knew that feeling all too well.

“I know,” he soothed. “I know.”

“When I’m hunting or drinking, I’m not thinking. But the rest of the time, I just… I can’t stand it. I don’t want to be here anymore, Cas.”

“Dean,” Cas whispered, his voice cracking on his name. He held him tighter, wanting to somehow envelop him completely, hide him away from the world.

“I’m so sorry. I’ve been so caught up in my own ridiculous drama that I didn’t see. We'll make this better. We’ll work out what you need to be okay again. You’re not alone in this.”

Cas stroked Dean’s back slowly, rhythmically, comfortingly. 

“We’ll make this okay,” he murmured. “I won’t let you down again.”

“Cas,” Dean murmured so quietly into Cas’ neck that Cas barely caught the words. “I can’t...”

“You don’t have to do anything, except stay alive,” Cas soothed. “I don’t expect anything else. We’ll work on the rest.”

“I’m not about to throw myself in front of a bus,” Dean muttered. “I wouldn’t do that.”

Cas didn’t point out that some of his hunting trips weren’t very far off doing just that. Dean already knew and mentioning it wouldn’t help.

Dean pulled back, looking at Cas intently. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen, his eyelashes spiked wet with tears. He looked so lost and so heartbreakingly beautiful. Cas had wanted to kiss Dean so many times over the years, but right now he didn’t just want to, he felt like he _needed_ to, that if he didn’t he wouldn’t survive, like he would somehow starve without it. He took a steadying breath.

Reaching out, Cas allowed himself to run his knuckles down Dean’s cheek in a caress. It wasn’t a kiss and it wasn’t enough, but as Dean leaned into his touch, Cas felt his lips curving up in a smile.

“I’ve missed you,” Cas whispered, as if saying it any louder would make it too real, too much like he was saying more. 

Dean gazed at Cas through his wet lashes, his lips parted, his eyes full of so many emotions that Cas couldn't separate any single one out to identify it. He could read so many people, but not Dean, never Dean. The penalty for getting it wrong was too high when it came to him.

“Missed you too,” Dean admitted hoarsely.

Cas’ stomach seemed to twist at his words, at the way he spoke them, like they really meant something to him. He let his thumb caress Dean’s damp cheek.

“You’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.” 

He pulled Dean’s unresisting head back down onto his shoulder, letting his hand caress the back of his neck, enjoying the feel of the soft, spiky hair against his fingers. The lower he traced down Dean’s neck, the softer the little hairs were, and Cas loved the way they felt. He didn’t want this bubble of theirs to burst, didn’t want it to be over, because he didn’t think he’d ever get to do this again. Would the memory be enough to sustain him?

Dean sighed softly into Cas' neck. The feel of it sent a shudder through Cas, and Dean's arms tightened around him in response. They held each other quietly for so long that Cas would have thought Dean had fallen asleep, if not for the movement of the hand that was slowly stroking up and down his spine through his coat and jumper.

“I can't do this without you." Dean's voice was husky and muffled as he spoke into Cas' neck, the vibrations of it making Cas want to tip his neck to the side to give him more skin to speak against.

“You won’t have to,” Cas vowed. “I won’t leave again. I’ll stay as long as you want me.”

Cas felt Dean's fingers gripping the material of his coat even tighter, his arms tightening around him to the point where it was almost painful.

“I’ll always want you, Cas.”

It was spoken gruffly, but the words shook Cas to his core. He swallowed twice, trying to regain control, but he felt himself trembling far worse than before, and he could do nothing to stop it. His body so firmly pressed to Dean’s, there was no way Dean could miss what he’d done to him. 

What way Dean had meant those words was irrelevant - romantically or as a friend, it didn't matter, because for someone who had never truly felt wanted by anyone in his very long life, hearing those words from Dean's lips had been like an affirmation. It meant everything. 

Dean pulled back, his eyes searching Cas’ face wordlessly for more than a minute, watching as Cas trembled in his arms, half wishing he could hide, but refusing to look away as if he had something to be ashamed of.

“Cas,” Dean murmured, the word sounding like a prayer on his lips. 

He leaned down so close to Cas that for a single moment Cas was convinced he was going to kiss him, but then Dean's lips were brushing against his ear and Cas groaned low in his throat, although he couldn’t say if it was from disappointment, or the way the sensations were going straight from his ear to his groin.

“Promise me,” Dean spoke, his breath hot in his ear.

Cas faltered, his head not capable of clear thought. “What?”

Dean’s hand was sliding into Cas’ hair and a shocked gasp escaped Cas’ lips when Dean's fingers tightened, pulling his hair taut against his scalp. 

“Now, Cas.” Dean’s command in Cas’ ear sounded almost feral and Cas felt his breathing speeding up in response; that commanding tone did things to him that it really shouldn’t. 

Cas’ body had become pliant in Dean’s arms, trusting Dean completely even as he took his fistful of hair and pulled until Cas’ head was tipped right back. His neck now bared and exposed, Cas didn't resist at all, only moving to rise up on his knees, arching his back in an attempt to keep his centre of gravity. 

"What… what do you want me to promise?" It was difficult to talk, difficult to breathe and Cas wasn't sure it was anything to do with the position Dean had his head in. The air felt charged, like it did after the very fiercest of thunderstorms and Cas’ skin seemed to tingle with barely controlled energy.

Another sharp tug had Cas reaching out blindly, grasping Dean’s shirt tightly in his fists, clinging on for all he was worth, partly so he didn't overbalance and partly because he needed something solid to ground him. His breath was coming in audible pants, his body almost constantly shuddering now. He'd been fighting an erection from the moment Dean had pressed him into the door earlier, but now he was properly hard and he desperately hoped that Dean wouldn't notice.

Cas tried to tip his head up enough to look at Dean, but Dean held him firm and Cas let out a desperate whimper that made Dean's eyes darken until they were almost all pupil. 

"Promise me…" Dean repeated, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed, his gaze dropping to Cas’ mouth.

"Anything." The word came out as a moan and Cas watched as Dean seemed to fight for control, his lips parting, his jaw tensing as he looked at Cas like he wanted to consume him. His eyes closed for a split second and when he opened them again the blazing heat in them made Cas jerk his hips against Dean out of pure instinct. 

"Dean," Cas moaned, barely recognising his own voice.

"Never leave me again, Cas." His words were rough - raw - full of every emotion he had been suppressing. They made Cas want to promise him anything - _everything_. 

"Do you hear me?” Dean growled. “Never! Whatever the situation - you make sure you come back to me. You got that?" 

"Yes." Cas' tongue came out to wet his parched lips and Dean watched it, fascinated, his own ragged breathing seeming to echo around the small room. The hand that wasn't gripping Cas' hair came to cup his face, and Dean let his thumb trace over Cas’ newly dampened bottom lip, dragging over it, parting Cas’ lips and making Cas wish he would slide his thumb into his mouth so he could taste it.

"Say it," Dean growled.

The fingers that were clutching onto Dean’s shirt were clenching and unclenching over and over again.

"Fuck. Dean. Please." 

Dean shook his head, refusing to let Cas go, even though that wasn't what Cas had meant, wasn't what he was asking for. 

"Say it, Cas!" 

"I promise I'll never leave you," Cas gasped, surrendering. "Never, Dean. I'm yours. I'll always be yours."

A cross between a growl and a moan left Dean's throat at Cas’ words. His fingers loosened in Cas' hair, moving to massage his scalp instead, soothing where he’d pulled the hair tight. Dean dragged Cas back up to him until their chests were pressed together, their foreheads touching. Both men breathed hard, trying to catch their breath and Dean was shaking his head slowly, his forehead bumping against Cas’ as if denying the truth in the words he’d demanded from Cas.

“Dean?” Cas murmured. 

Their lips were less than half an inch apart and the intensity in Dean's eyes as he held Cas, his hands in his hair - it made Cas feel sure that he _must_ be feeling this too. There was electricity crackling between them, and a feeling that was so very like falling even though Cas' feet were still on the ground. He had never felt more alive than he did in this moment. 

Dean was still shaking his head, still holding Cas, tears welling up again. It was like everything was overwhelming him, like now he had finally let himself feel, it was like a dam had broken and he couldn't stop it. Cas didn’t know what to do to make him see that he was Dean’s from the moment he'd first laid hands on him. How could Dean ever doubt it when he could see what a mess just a few words from him could make of Cas? 

"Did you hear me, Dean?" Cas ground out, his hands sliding up until his arms were around Dean’s neck. "Look at me. Did you hear me?"

Dean pulled back an inch and looked up from Cas’ mouth to his eyes and he nodded. The hands that were still in Cas' hair caressed, stroked, cradled, pulling him back to him again until their mouths were almost touching, their chests flush against each other, mouths almost brushing. 

"I'm sorry," Dean murmured against Cas' mouth. 

Cas shook his head. “No. No more being sorry.” 

“I,” said Cas, his fingers caressing the sensitive skin at the back of Dean’s neck. “Am.” Their lips were brushing with each word, their breath combining. Dean’s eyes had drifted shut. “Yours.”

"Yes," Dean affirmed against Cas' mouth, in a gasp. "Mine." 

Neither man nor Angel moved, mouths almost touching, both so still that they were each fighting to control each shuddering breath, as if any movement, anything at all could break this, shatter it. 

Neither one of them noticed Sam appearing in the doorway, watching them for a moment with wide eyes, before tiptoeing back to the kitchen to update his fiancée.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me for what happens next.  
> *hides*


	7. Kiss Me

_ Kiss me.  _

Cas was right there, pressed so tightly against his chest that Dean could feel every sharp intake of breath, every shudder that went through him. This powerful, incredible being was trembling just from Dean's touch. He was millions of years old, had knowledge Dean wasn't sure he could even comprehend, and he was touching Dean like  _ he _ was something precious. It was exhilarating,  _ perfect  _ and if he wasn't careful, it would become utterly addictive. 

“Cas,” Dean breathed. Cas' fingers had slid into his hair and were massaging his scalp. Dean let his fingers do the same, fascinated by the way Cas' eyes drifted closed and his lips parted in what Dean couldn't help but see as an unconscious invitation. 

Dean growled _.  _

_ Fucking kiss me.  _

It couldn't be him who made the first move. He didn't know if Cas would  _ want  _ to kiss him, not anymore. 

Dean was being as obvious as possible - anyone else would have been naked in his lap by now. There was no mistaking this for friendship. This wasn't platonic affection, it wasn't even comfort anymore. Dean didn't know how Cas felt, but he'd been sporting a pretty insistent boner since Cas had dropped innocently to his knees like he was offering himself up to him like some glorious, submissive treat on a plate. Dean would give up pie for the rest of his life if Cas would close that gap between them and just kiss him. 

Was there a way for them to come back from this now? Would it really matter if he gave in, just a little? If he was wrong, what was the worst that could happen? 

_ I could lose Cas.  _

As Dean's fingers brushed lightly against the edge of Cas' ear, Cas' breath hitched and his head tipped to the side, offering his neck to Dean without even seeming to realise he was doing it. Dean eyed the delicate expanse of skin, desperately wanting to lock his mouth onto it, taste it, leave a mark there for the world to see that this incredible Angel was  _ his.  _

_ This is dangerous territory. _

"I don't know what I'm doing, Cas," Dean admitted shakily, eyes locked onto that patch of skin that was begging for his attention. "If I do this, it could completely destroy me - destroy  _ us _ ."

_ Reassure me. Tell me you want this, that it won't change a thing.  _

The smile instantly fell from Cas' face and Dean felt a familiar stab of self hatred for being the one to do it, for being the one to take away the first moment of peace and harmony they'd had together in months. But this wasn't real, it couldn't be real. The wires were crossed in his brain, his emotions were mixed up. He felt relief that his best friend was alive and here with him, but the rest of it wasn't real. He was ruining everything. If he lost Cas yet again he wouldn't cope, he wouldn't come back from it this time. He wasn't yet sure that he'd managed to survive the last time - he was on pretty shaky ground. 

"I thought that when Chuck was defeated I'd be free, that I'd finally feel like my life was  _ mine _ . But it turns out that the only time I feel like I even exist is when I'm with you. It fucking terrifies me, Cas. You fucking terrify me."

With a small whimper in his throat, Cas closed the gap between them to press his forehead to Dean’s, providing a gentle pressure and intimacy that was meant to calm him, comfort him. His hands tightened on Dean's shoulders, holding him in place like he was scared Dean was about to make a run for it. 

“Does it help that I’m terrified too?” There was a waver in his voice. 

God, Dean wanted to kiss him so damn much. He knew Cas had kissed people before - Christ, Dean knew he'd had sex before, but when Cas looked at Dean it was with this look of awe. It was like he'd never experienced anything like this before, and all Dean was doing was touching him in the smallest of ways. If there hadn't been this palpable charge in the air, and if each of them weren't reacting to every touch like it was their first, it could almost have been innocent. 

"It helps a little, yeah," he admitted sheepishly. He was that much of a selfish bastard. "Can't lose you, Cas." 

Dean pulled back to look at Cas. His friend,  _ his angel, _ kneeling between his legs - it was the most erotic, breathtaking thing that Dean could remember ever having seen in his miserable life. Cas' eyes were closed as he clung on to him, his lips parted. So trusting, so beautiful.  _ His.  _

The trembling in Cas' body had calmed, but every now and again Dean could feel a shudder go through him that made him want to wrap his arms around Cas and protect him from the world. They could run away. Dean could have this. They could disappear from everyone and everything and this could be real. 

Dean let his thumbs trace over Cas' cheekbones, before pulling his face back up to his. He pressed a brief, closed mouthed kiss just under Cas' ear, before nuzzling into his neck, letting out a groan as Cas nuzzled back, hot breath ghosting over his ear, sending shivers through his entire body. Cas scraped blunt nails down the back of Dean's neck, drawing a strangled moan from his lips. 

"Fuck, Cas. I can't think straight when you're doing shit like that," Dean groaned, wondering if Cas could feel how hard he was as they pressed tightly together. Cas' hips were pressing into his thighs, his lower stomach against Dean's groin. He could only hope that the ridiculous amount of layers Cas insisted on wearing would act as a buffer or Cas would be under no illusions that this was even remotely innocent. Letting him know that Dean was thinking about doing all sorts of graphic things to him probably wouldn't put Cas at ease. 

"Do you need to think?" Cas asked seriously, his fingers lightly tugging on the hairs at the back of his neck in a way that Dean realised no one had ever done before, but was now his new favourite thing. 

"I really wish I didn't." 

To his regret and disappointment Cas immediately stopped, his hands going to Dean's shoulders. He felt bereft as Cas pulled back to look at him, appraising him. 

"I'm sorry, Dean," he said gravely. "I don't want you to be unable to think this through." 

Dean sighed. "How come whenever I want you to listen to me you don't, but when I don't want you to listen to me, you're Mr Attentive."

"I don't understand," Cas frowned. "Which part of what you've said would you like me to ignore?" 

Dean made a frustrated strangled noise at the back of his throat and Cas tipped his head to the side, studying him intently, eyes narrowed. 

"It's just, I don't want to do anything that would risk me losing you again," Dean admitted. "I need you, Cas. And I don't know if you've seen what happens when I get  _ friendly _ with people, but generally a couple of weeks later we part ways." 

Cas was still watching him, but Dean couldn't for the life of him read what he was thinking any more. He'd shut down, closed himself off and it broke Dean's heart that he'd done this. 

“Okay…” Cas said eventually. “So this…?”

“Is really fucking dangerous,” Dean finished, sliding his hands down Cas' outstretched arms, right to Cas' hands that were still holding tightly to his shoulders. He let his thumbs rub over the backs of Cas' hands, caressing them. 

“Don’t hate me,” he begged, his stomach twisting as he watched Cas quite obviously fighting to distance himself, mentally and physically, even while just moments ago they were so close that Dean could feel the heat radiating from his body. "It's not that I don't… I'm just not in a place where I could cope with losing you again. I've never… it wouldn't end well." 

Luckily, Cas was well versed in 'Dean Can't Speak in Full Sentences' and seemed to understand him. 

“I could never hate you,” Cas reminded him, sitting back on his knees, reluctantly but effectively breaking their contact. “I understand. Your friendship is important to me too, Dean. You're right that it shouldn't be put at risk.”

But he was formal and stilted again. He'd stopped trembling under Dean's fingers, instead he was pulling away completely and it was terrifying Dean. He wasn't just scared of losing him, he was scared of losing the part of Cas that became real and unguarded around him and no one else. It was special, that part of Cas was his and now Cas was locking it away again, all because he was a douche who couldn't trust his own feelings anymore. 

"When I step out of that door, we'll forget any of this ever happened," Cas said decisively, making Dean's heart sink to his boots. He'd fucked up. He'd fucked up by trying not to fuck up. 

"Yeah," he agreed quietly, although his heart was screaming at him not to. "I don't want to screw things up, Cas." 

This hurt. It really fucking hurt. He didn't want to stop, didn't want to see the carefully composed blank look that was now on Cas' face, where moments before Dean had been able to see  _ everything _ . 

“So we’ll stop,” Cas said softly, steadily, obviously trying to reassure Dean. "It's okay."

It wasn't okay. Nothing about this was okay. But if they stopped right now they could come back from this. It would be weird for a bit, but it would be forgotten, written off as too much whisky and emotions running high. 

"Or I could kiss you?" Dean suggested, not even registering the words until they were already out of his disobedient, insubordinate mouth, and he couldn't take them back.

"Just for a second. Just once," he added, fully aware of how desperate he sounded. He could feel his heart thudding painfully in his chest as he held his breath, waiting for Cas' response. It was different saying the words out loud. Touching Cas, holding him, even pressing a kiss to his neck, it wasn't acknowledged out loud, so it wasn't quite as real, quite this scary. 

“I thought this was dangerous?” The only change to Cas' even expression was the slight tightening of his jaw. 

It wasn't technically a no… 

"It is," Dean admitted. "But this is killing me. We're going to stop and you're going to go home, and we'll never go back to this, and I'll never get to…" 

He couldn't finish his sentence. He finally noticed that this time it wasn't Cas who was trembling, his own hands were the ones that were unsteady. What was he doing? 

_ Oh God. I'm such a fucking mess.  _

"Dean," Cas murmured, pulling a hand free to cup his face. "You've contradicted yourself too many times - I don't want this to be a mistake. I don't think this is what you need right now." 

Dean couldn't find the words. He shook his head his eyes pleading with Cas, and Cas responded by giving him a sad half smile. 

"You need a friend. This is… this is selfish. It's reckless."

Dean stared at him, breathless, terrified he was going to lose him. Then before he could change his mind, he leaned in, his mouth finding Cas' mouth, noses bumping and then angling. 

The moment their lips touched, Dean realised his mistake. He'd thought he could do this and stay in control, he'd thought it would show Cas he cared, that it would be alright, that this wasn't reckless or risky at all. How he thought kissing Cas would be reassuring, he didn't know. It wasn't. It was like jumping from an aeroplane without a parachute. Falling, terrified, exhilarated, adrenaline flooding his body, his heart pounding in his ears, his toes curling, his head spinning, his every sense overwhelmed. 

Cas' lips were dry, warm, firmer than Dean had expected; and when Cas finally gave in, finally dropped his guard and let his lips part to let Dean finally taste him, he was lost. He pulled Cas harder to him, his hands on his hips, not caring that his fingers were digging in too hard, he just wanted Cas closer. It was all that mattered now, all he needed. 

"Dean," Cas moaned his name into his mouth and the sound of it, the feel of it was so obscene coming from Cas that Dean groaned, his hands slipping under Cas' coat to grab his hips in both hands, pulling him up, grinding against him, needy, desperate, heedless of how far over the line he was stepping.

Dean could feel him in this position - Cas was hard and if Dean pulled him just a little higher, a little more firmly, then he knew Cas would be able to feel exactly how hard he was too. The temptation to do just that was overwhelming, and Dean was half off the bed now, in an almost frenzied attempt to get closer to Cas, to press their cocks together through the denim of their jeans. That one moan had taken him from a slow simmer to a boil, and now he was mindless with it. 

Their tongues tangled and fought, and it was like the rest of the world had melted into nothing around them. There was only Cas with his Whisky flavoured mouth and his body, sliding against Dean's, setting their world on fire, making Dean want things he'd only dared think about when alone and drunk before. 

"You have too many clothes on," Dean growled against Cas' mouth. His hands slid under Cas' jumper, seeking skin, only to feel the cotton material of his t-shirt, half tucked into his jeans. Would Cas care if he just tore at his clothes to get them off him? He'd buy him more. 

"Dean…" 

Dean kissed him again, trapping his lip between his teeth and lathing it with his tongue until Cas squirmed needily between Dean's legs. He let go only when he felt a hand against his chest, not quite pushing him away, but pressing firmly nonetheless. 

"Cas… Don't," he whined. 

_ Please don't make this stop.  _

"We won't come back from this if we don't stop now," Cas growled, his voice somehow even deeper than usual.

"I don't care." Dean caressed the inch of bare skin he'd found at Cas' hip and was gratified to hear Cas' sharp intake of breath. 

"How am I supposed to just be your friend, knowing that kissing you feels like that?" Cas said gently, gazing at Dean. "You're not thinking about the consequences of this." 

"How am I supposed to stop kissing you when you look at me like that?" Dean countered. 

"Like what?" 

"With those huge, beautiful, fucking adoring eyes of yours." 

"Dean! We have to stop," Cas said firmly, a pink blush staining his cheeks in a way that Dean found ridiculously adorable. Cas sat back on his heels. "I'm not taking advantage of you." 

Dean gaped at Cas. "You've got to be fucking kidding me - what am I? Some sort of blushing maiden? I was worried I was taking advantage of  _ you. _ " 

Cas frowned. "You're not," he dismissed with an impatient wave of his hand. "But you're right - you need a friend, and so do I. What we have needs to be safe and stable. It's what you said just a few minutes ago, remember?" 

That was before he'd realised that kissing Cas was something akin to a freakin' out of body experience, but fine. Whatever. 

"I remember." 

He'd wanted it too, hadn't he? Cas had kissed him back, he'd clung to his shoulders, he'd dragged his fingers through Dean's hair, he'd  _ moaned _ . Dean hadn't just imagined it all had he? Oh God, what if he'd misread everything? What if Cas wanting something he thought he couldn't have was something much more simple and platonic than Dean had interpreted it as? What if Cas was horrified at what had happened, would leave and never come back? What if-

A hand on his arm interrupted his panicked inner monologue as Cas gave Dean a gentle shake to get his attention. 

"Stop. Now you're overthinking this." 

"First I'm not thinking enough, now I'm thinking too much. Make up your mind." Dean scowled. The urge to kiss Cas again was actually painful, even if the Angel  _ was  _ pissing him off. 

The perplexed look of frustration on Cas's face would have been amusing if Dean wasn't so terrified he was about to lose him. 

"Did you want any of this, Cas?" Dean asked. He  _ had  _ to ask or he'd be analysing every moment of today until the day he died. "Was this all in my head?" 

"What do you think?" Cas asked, his eyebrow raised, a half smirk on his lips that Dean was fairly sure he'd never seen on his face before. It was filthy and Dean wondered what he'd unleashed. Yeah, okay, Cas had wanted him too. 

"I think that if you're going to look at me like that while you're on your knees in front of me, this  _ just friends  _ thing is not going to happen." 

Cas had the audacity to laugh and the sound of it had Dean's mouth turning up at the corners in a reluctant smile too. 

"I think we're going to be fine," Cas said, getting unsteadily to his feet and wincing at the stiffness of his cramping leg muscles.

"Better be." Dean stood too, adjusting his jeans and pulling his t-shirt down to cover the erection that he was fairly sure was with him for life now. 

Cas was rubbing his calf muscles and muttering discontentedly about being human. 

"We should probably get some food, or I'm going to be going on stage with an empty stomach, drinking beer. I'll be falling back off of it." 

"That's a good idea. I think I might be hungry too." 

"We can go hassle Sam and Eileen, see if they fancy a bite at that Chinese restaurant on the corner? I can go to The Rock Garden straight from there." He paused. "You could come and watch, if you like? It's only a 90 minute set. We could have a drink after." 

Cas shook his head and Dean tried not to let his disappointment show. He wasn't this person - he didn't  _ do  _ clingy and needy. When women did this to him, he ran a mile. He didn't want Cas to do the same to him. Oh God, what was wrong with him? A couple of kisses and he was a wreck. Did Cas have any idea what he'd done to him? 

"Not tonight. I'll come for Chinese food though, and I'll call tomorrow so we can arrange something." He looked astutely at Dean. "I'm not disappearing. We're good now - I promise."

Dean felt a pulse of desire go through him at Cas' words. He'd never be able to hear Cas say, "I promise," again without being able to picture him on his knees, back arched, pliant in Dean's hands. 

"Why is this so easy for you?" Dean asked, turning away to go to his wardrobe in search of a change of clothes. 

"It's not." Cas caught his gaze as he turned back, a sad half smile on his face. "But I've had a lot of practice at this." 

Dean dropped the clothes onto the end of his bed and squeezed Cas' arm as he walked past in search of socks. How long had Cas liked him in that way? Dare he ask? He'd lain awake at night trying to decide when he'd noticed a change in his friend, but he'd never been able to pinpoint any single moment. Did Cas still like him as much as he did? If he did, would he really be able to push Dean away after a kiss like that? Why hadn't it fucked him up too? 

"I need to grab a quick shower," Dean gestured towards the door.  _ An ice cold one.  _

"Yeah. I've got to make a call, then I'll go find Sam." 

Dean frowned. Kate - it had to be. Six weeks entirely on his own, of course Cas was going to find himself a girlfriend, and she was very obviously his girlfriend - no one was that protective without an ulterior motive. Last time it had taken Cas no time at all to go from meeting April to sleeping with her, so Dean shouldn't have been surprised. Those worried looks she'd been giving Cas in the restaurant.  _ Shit. _ No wonder Cas was good with them cooling things down before they could go any further. 

"I'll give you some privacy," Dean said, awkwardly, leaving to get himself a towel from the laundry room. 

Sam greeted Dean on his way back, his towel thrown over his shoulder. His brother was curiously amiable considering Dean had ruined his game earlier. Dean had been expecting a few words about it, or at least some sulking, but instead what he got was a pat on the back and a slightly awkward hug. 

"Really proud of you, Dean," Sam said, looking suspiciously dewy-eyed, before burying his head back in his textbooks. 

Sam had applied to go back to law school and all the studying he'd been doing seemed to Dean to be frying his brain. But it was what he wanted and Dean was happy that Sam's life was finally back on track, even if it did mean far less time with him. He'd expected this, made plans for this, but did he really want to leave to go off hunting alone now Cas was back? 

"Um, thanks?" He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Sam. "Do you fancy some food at that place on the corner? Cas is coming." 

"I'd love that. I'll ask Eileen - we can have a celebration!" Sam's beatific, teary smile was unnerving.

"You do that." 

Dean hadn't meant to listen in on his way back. It had been a few minutes, and if Cas had really wanted that much privacy, he could have closed the door, surely? As it was his voice clearly carried down the hall. 

"... what you were trying to tell me. I will do everything in my power to fix this. I'm so sorry." 

"Cas? Can I come in for a minute?" Dean asked from the doorway. "I just need to grab my clothes." 

Cas nodded distractedly, already done. His phone was dropped onto the bed beside him and Dean looked closely at him. He looked drained, sad and defeated.

"Girl troubles?" Dean asked. Just because he didn't like Kate didn't mean he couldn't at least try to help. It was the least he could do after screwing everything up today. What if this was about their kiss? What if Cas wanted to tell her? 

"Something like that."

"If being here is causing trouble…?" He could back off, he could. Just as long as he didn't lose Cas entirely. He'd do whatever he needed to do. 

Cas rubbed his face tiredly and his forced laugh held absolutely no amusement. "Food. This awkward body needs food." 

"It probably needs sleep too. Have you slept at all? You look beat." He looked like he needed looking after, fed properly, helped properly. And Dean didn't have the right to. 

"I don't need to sleep. I'm not tired," Cas insisted, ignoring Dean's disbelieving look. 

"Sammy used to say the same thing. A couple of rock-lullabies and he was out like a light." 

"I'm not a child." 

"Neither was Sam - this was last week," Dean joked. 

"I'm sure Eileen would love you going into their room to sing Sam to sleep every night. Actually, how are they doing? It's a small room for two of them to share - Sam said they were looking for a place." 

Dean knew Cas was changing the subject, but he let him. 

"Yeah, they're viewing a house tomorrow. It's somewhere between the University and here. Sam asked me to move with them, but I ain't cramping their style, and I like the Bunker. It's the first place that's ever felt like home." He sighed. "Gonna be a bit quiet here though. Unless you fancy moving back in?" 

Dean wasn't even slightly hopeful. He'd been expecting an outright, "No," so when Cas shrugged and actually seemed to think about it, hope soared in his chest. 

"We can talk about it. I do feel quite at home here. We'll see how things go." 

Dean grinned, moving close to Cas despite all his promises to himself that he wouldn't. 

"Platonic, friend hug?" he suggested with a hopeful smile. 

Cas rolled his eyes, but was in his arms in seconds, arms around him, chin on his shoulder. Dean held Cas tightly, letting the feeling of safety and happiness seep through him, warming him. He'd missed this. Cas was right, it was going to be okay. It had to be - Dean was going to make sure of it. 

  
  



	8. Through Glass

It was 7pm in a bright, bustling, busy restaurant. Families were laughing, couples were chatting and cheesy music was playing in the background. The air was buzzing with chattering and happiness and everyone was relaxed and having fun. Everyone that was, except Dean, who was seriously wondering what the hell was happening to him. 

Dean usually loved a restaurant with a buffet - he took it as a personal challenge to get his, and everyone else's, money's worth. Today the food felt like sawdust in his mouth. It wasn’t a recent thing - he'd been like this ever since Cas came back, and even Sam had noticed that he was losing too much weight and was looking unwell. He’d even started cooking Dean bacon each morning to try to tempt him into eating. Dean hadn’t been able to eat much of it, so he’d surreptitiously fed most of the bacon to Miracle. At least it had been appreciated by someone. Best of all, it had earned him brownie points in his and Sam's eternal battle over who Miracle loved the most. Neither one of them were prepared to admit the winner was actually Eileen. 

“Are you alright?” Eileen asked him, sitting down next to Dean with her plate piled high. She surreptitiously eyed his modest plate of food. “Bit overwhelming having Cas back?”

Dean shot a look across the room to where Cas was digging into the salad bowl that these places always had in an effort to pretend to be healthy, but that no one ever touched. Because really, who the hell comes to an All You Can Eat restaurant to eat a salad?

“You know when you watch a zombie film and there’s always this guy who fell into a coma at the start, before the outbreak happened?" Dean struggled to tear his eyes away from Cas. Maybe the novelty would wear off soon? Maybe that was all it was?

Eileen nodded encouragingly.

"Then he wakes up and the world is completely changed and it's terrifying, but he’s got to go out there and chop all these corpses' heads off, or he's doomed? But the man’s an accountant and can’t even lift a sword, let alone use one, and he’s so out of his depth it’s laughable?”

“Ouch.” She shot him a sympathetic look. 

“Yeah.” Dean mimed being unable to lift a heavy sword off the ground. 

“If it helps at all,” Eileen said. “The accountant usually figures the sword out by the middle of episode two, and by the end of the season he’s pretty bad-ass.”

Dean considered for a moment. That sort of did help.

“Thanks.”

Sam and Cas were back shortly after, both of them with plates full of food that Dean would rather starve to death than attempt to eat.

“Have I taught you nothing?” Dean gestured in disgust at Cas’ salad. “Is that even food? It looks like the decoration you get on the _top_ of real food.”

“I think it’s excellent he’s making healthy choices now he’s got a body that needs taking care of,” Sam said, giving Cas an approving smile. Dean remembered quite clearly now why he used to occasionally kick his brother in the shin at meal times. It was worth the ass-whooping he got if it trained even some of the smugness out of him. 

“It’s not that,” Cas said, picking up a slice of cucumber and nibbling the edge of it. “I’ve still got enough Grace that I’m not quite human, and I can still taste all the molecules in everything, all at once. I’m stuck with simple foods until it runs out entirely. What I really want is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I was given one last time I was human, and I was so hungry at the time that it felt like the best thing I’d ever tasted. I tried one last week and it tasted like something you would feed to Miracle.”

“Hey, Miracle has excellent taste!” Dean protested. 

“You’re only saying that because you keep feeding him cheese burgers when you think I’m not looking,” Sam muttered.

“When do you think your Grace will run out?” Eileen asked.

“I truly don’t know. I’m still not sleeping, and I think staying awake has started draining it much more quickly.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Sam asked. “Once it’s gone, you’ll not be in limbo anymore. Right now you’re not quite one or the other; neither human nor Angel. It can’t be easy.”

“Sam,” Dean growled in warning. He was watching Cas, seeing the tiny, barely perceptible signs that he wasn’t altogether happy with Sam's words. Maybe Dean picked up on it so easily because lately he had been the one to upset Cas so often, but he was feeling so protective over Cas right now that the feeling was borderline overwhelming. No one was allowed to upset his Angel.

“What?” Sam frowned, confusion evident in his wrinkled forehead. 

“It’s fine,” Cas said calmly. “Sam’s right - I don’t really belong in either place. But giving up my Grace - that’s a bit like purposely letting blood. It’s the only thing I’ve got left of what I was before. And what if I drained it, wasted it, and then Sam chopped off a finger and needed healing?”

"Why would it be me getting my finger chopped off? Why not Dean?" 

"Because you're the clumsy one," Dean observed rather unfairly. "You fall over your own feet in those big clown shoes of yours. Just try to deny it." 

"Because you’re the only one who cooks," Cas told Sam, ignoring Dean. 

"Hey, I can cook! I'm a good cook!" Dean argued. "Just because you haven't tried my cooking, Mr 'Everything Tastes of Molecules' doesn't mean I'm not good at it." 

"When _is_ the last time you cooked?" Sam challenged. 

Dean screwed up his face, trying to remember the last time.

“I made Pizza!”

“You bought ready-made frozen pizza two weeks ago, and you burnt it!”

"I thought we were picking on Cas here?" Dean grumbled. 

"Hey Cas, do you fancy coming to look at this house with us on Monday?" Eileen asked, obviously trying to change the subject and quell the bickering. Sam’s face immediately lit up in excitement and as much as Dean had to admit that he was feeling a bit left behind, seeing Sam so excited was just awesome.

"As long as it's not before eleven in the morning, that should be fine. I have a therapy appointment quite early on."

Dean choked on the chicken ball he had just popped into his mouth and Sam's eyebrows shot up, before throwing Dean a look that blatantly said, ' _See! Even an Angel of the Lord is willing to talk to someone about his problems!'_

Eileen, not reacting at all beyond a small smile, took a sip of her drink and said, "Oh no! That's really bad timing - it’s at ten. But we're pretty sure we're going to put an offer in, so we'll be back there again soon. Sam and I are going to need your free labour for painting and putting up shelves." 

Sam opened his mouth to speak, but Dean held his hand up to silence him. Staring at Cas like he'd just grown an extra head, he said, “Therapy? You’re getting your head shrunk?”

Cas nodded and carried on using his fork to spear pieces of what Dean was pretty sure was grass. 

“It’s only been three sessions so far," Cas expanded, "but I think it's been helpful.”

“Why the fuck are you seeing a shrink?”

“Do you see me as a paragon of mental health?” Cas asked, sprinkling some sort of yellow oil over his food, making the leaves glisten, reminding Dean of when someone had just relieved themselves on a path of weeds at the curbside. “I think my daddy issues alone will take a decade to address.”

“Amen to that,” Sam muttered, ignoring Dean’s scowl.

"You can't just sit there, calmly eating that fucking travesty of a meal, and just throw into conversation that you're telling all of our secrets to some-" 

"Dean, that's enough!" Sam warned, and Dean grit his teeth at their sudden role reversal. 

"It's fine, Sam. Let Dean say what he needs to say." 

"You're even sounding like a shrink now!" Dean growled. "You'll end up being taken away by the men in white coats, Cas. Or worse! Do you know what our government would do to you if they found out what you really are? And now there's some guy out there who knows all our shit!" 

“No, Dean. ' _Some guy'_ now knows _my_ shit. And frankly, I don’t think he believes most of what I’m saying, but we’ve agreed to work in metaphors.”

“Well, I think it's great,” Sam said, reaching across the table to pat his hand. “It takes real guts to take the first step in doing something like that.”

“And a hacked, bottomless credit card,” Cas added wryly. 

"I can't believe everyone is good with this." 

"Talking about your feelings never really has been your thing though," Sam said. "So it’s harder for you to understand. I've considered seeing someone before. We've led really screwed up lives, Dean."

"Not as screwed up as some," Dean said, shrugging it off.

"You've got me there. Can you imagine Chuck and Amara in therapy? I'd pay to see that!" Sam grinned. "Or Rowena and Crowley!" 

Dean gave a half hearted smirk, but it wasn't real. He could feel Cas watching him as he pretended to be fascinated with the food he was moving around on his plate. Their newfound truce, fledgling friendship, whatever they wanted to call it - it was fragile and neither one of them felt secure in it, despite their promises. Every cross word felt like a risk right now and he’d probably ruined their truce in one single meal. 

The rest of the evening felt uneasy, and as they all said goodnight - Sam and Eileen to go back to the bunker, Cas to go back to his apartment, Dean to go do his thing on stage at The Rock Garden; Dean grabbed Cas’ arm and held him back. 

“Look man, I’m sorry. Sam’s been putting pressure on me to see a shrink, and if I made you feel bad about it, I never meant to. I just worry, is all.”

Cas looked at him and Dean forced himself not to look away. He never used to look away - Hell, he would stare back twice as hard when Cas looked at him normally. He’d heard people talking about it, been ribbed about it, even had Charlie assume he and Cas were secretly fucking because of it. Now he could barely look at him, because every time he did all he could think about was that damn kiss. 

‘ _How am I supposed to just be your friend when I know that kissing you feels like that?’_ \- well apparently Cas was doing just fine with that. It was Dean that couldn’t stop thinking about tasting Cas’ lips again, and it was killing him.

_It’s been like two hours. Get a grip._

"You're worried he'll tell me to stop being your friend. That he'll say you're not good for me." It wasn't a question - in so many ways Cas knew Dean better than he knew himself. Although, given his current unbalanced state of mind, maybe that wasn't saying much. Dean had no idea at all who he was right now. 

"I'm not good for you," Dean admitted. "It doesn't take a professional to figure that one out."

"Do you really think that?" Cas asked sadly. "Even after everything we talked about?" 

Dean didn't know what to say. Of course he felt that way, he'd always felt that way. Anyone foolish enough to care about him got hurt, either by him or because of him. He was a fuck-up, he knew that. He was good at hunting, not navigating this sort of shit. It was messy, confusing and it wasn't meant to be _for_ him. He’d learned early on what he was allowed to have in this life, and whatever it was that this was with Cas, it wasn’t on the list. He wasn’t worthy of Cas’ friendship, never mind anything else, but he wanted it so much he felt like he couldn’t breathe when he thought about losing it again.

Cas looked so forlorn, his face half lit in the flickering glow of the streetlight. Dean wanted to reach out to him, hold him, bury himself in him until all Cas’ doubt and all his own self hatred melted from their minds. When Cas had touched him, for a few blissful minutes he’d finally stopped hurting. No alcohol, no hunting, but somehow Cas had made him feel like his world wasn't ending. Then he'd fucked it up. 

“Kate can recommend someone for you to talk to if you ever do feel like it would help?" Cas was saying gently. "She’s got contacts, and she can tell you who’s likely to be good, who you can trust. You could ask to see her, but she's a child psychologist and I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that would translate.”

_Oh that would be great, wouldn’t it? Kate would have him showing her on the doll where they hurt him. Fuck that a million ways to Sunday._

“Cas, I’m going to say this to you once - I ain’t going to see no head shrink. No way, no how. That's it. The end. I trust you and I trust Sammy - there may be a few others out there, but that number ain't high. It takes more than a certificate in a frame and a soothing voice for me to trust someone with who I am.”

He paused, then reached out to Cas and squeezed his shoulder. "Look Cas, who I am is... I'm not someone that someone like that would _want_ to help.”

Cas tipped his face so that his cheek was pressing against Dean's hand where it lay on his shoulder, then he did the best thing he could do - he listened, his face full of empathy. If he’d have pushed, Dean was at the point where he’d have exploded. Cas knew him better than to do that.

"And how would I explain any of that shit? _Yeah, my dad left us with no money and no food for weeks at a time. Why? Well he was hunting this yellow eyed demon who burned my mum alive on the ceiling. Then I had a lovely little vacation in hell for forty years. Thirty of those I was raped, tortured and taken apart, piece by piece. But it’s okay, because for the remaining ten, I tortured people until they begged for death, and that's when I stopped feeling much of anything at all._ \- How do you think that would go? _"_

Dean couldn't look at Cas and he outright flinched when Cas touched his face. 

“And that’s just for starters, Cas. I’ve done so many things, and lost so many people. How am I supposed to tell a stranger any of it? No one can know any of the shit we’ve done - we’d be in a prison or mental hospital if they did. I get that it’s working for you, but don’t ask me to do it Cas. I can’t do that, even for you.”

Cas calmly waited until he’d finished, and then he gave him a sad half smile.

"I'm going to hug you now," he said, as if he was talking to a frightened animal. "Is that okay?" 

"Fucking hell, Cas. I'm not fragile. I'm not breakable. If you want to hug me, just do it!"

This was the sort of mood he had where he’d get into Baby and go on a hunt. Something quick and messy and violent. But he couldn’t do that - he’d promised Sam. 

Cas took a step forward. Reaching between them, he pulled at Dean's tightly folded arms. Dean hadn’t even been aware that he’d folded them defensively in front of himself, and he looked down in surprise as Cas pried them apart, before taking his numb, awkward hands in his. 

“It’ll be okay,” Cas said, putting Dean’s hands on either side of his own waist. It wasn’t their usual way to hug, but usual had gone out of the window over the last few hours. Maybe even years, and he’d somehow just not noticed.

“I don’t think it will,” Dean admitted. It was the first time he’d said it out loud.

“I will _make_ it okay.” Cas was wrapping his arms around him now, pulling him in until they were so close that the fluorescent light couldn’t find a single gap to shine through between their bodies.

"You're so incredibly stubborn," Cas murmured into Dean's neck, nuzzling his jaw with his nose. 

Dean took a breath and let it out slowly. The shouting in his head had gone completely silent the moment Cas had taken his hands in his. How did he do that?

"Yep," Dean agreed, not caring about it anymore, not now Cas was this close. He closed his eyes and buried his nose in Cas' hair. Even with the bitter wind whipping around their legs, people walking past, neither of them looking up - this was safe. This was right. That didn't have to mean anything, did it? It didn't have to be dangerous - it was just one friend comforting another. 

They held each other for too long; Too long for them to be just friends; too long for them to only be parting for a day; too long for it not to hurt to let go.

"How come everything becomes less confusing the moment I put my arms around you?" Cas murmured, echoing the same thought that was going through Dean's mind.

"Is this what we do now? Argue, hug it out, repeat?" Dean asked. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining - I mean it's working for us, right?" 

"I think this is how we communicate now," Cas agreed, and Dean felt his mouth curve into a smile against his skin. “Dean, what time do you have to be on stage tonight?”

Dean pulled away quickly to look at his watch, leaving Cas standing in front of him looking forlorn and more than a little abandoned. "Shit, I'm late! The set starts at 9!"

Cas' gave him a small smile.

"I'll call you tomorrow."

“Yeah. Tomorrow.”

Dean pulled Cas to his chest hard, wincing guiltily as he heard the breath being knocked out of him. Then he clapped Cas on the shoulder, and leaving him standing on the path alone, Dean ran. 

  
  


***

The bar was busy, packed to capacity like it was every Saturday night. This was Dean's first night playing indoors, and it felt cosy and welcoming. The bar’s manager, Luke, was good at his job and he’d capitalised on the already relaxed atmosphere, filling the place with comfy sofas as well as the usual chairs and tables. The lighting was perfect - dark enough that it encouraged people to relax, but bright enough to discourage most people from making out in public. It was a happy place, with lots of regular customers. Dean hadn’t had to break up a single proper fight in all the years he’d been coming here. It was definitely one of the better places he’d played in.

Dean shrugged off his coat in the back room, greeted the guys and took the beer that Luke was holding out to him. He was sure he’d participated in some sort of banter, because he could remember laughing, but he couldn’t have recalled what was said if his life depended on it. He just wasn’t in the right headspace. Then he was up onstage, guitar in his hands, performing to the cheers of the already half drunk audience.

He had to admit that getting a couple of nights here had been a decent idea of Sam’s. Dean had played before - occasionally for cash, but usually just to pay off bar tabs rather than for any tangible form of payment. It usually took him a couple of songs to warm up and feel comfortable, but once he had he loved the way it made him feel to stand up there, belting out the lyrics to a song he really liked. And yeah, in the past he had used to use it as a way to get laid - being in the band tended to triple a guy’s sex appeal.

Usually he would thrive on a night like tonight and live on the high it gave him for at least a couple of days after, but not tonight. Tonight he was distracted and he couldn’t shake it off. It was like he’d been sleepwalking for so long, and someone had woken him up and he was expected to just carry on like normal. 

Things weren’t normal. Everything was upside down. He’d kissed his best friend, and if Cas hadn’t had the presence of mind to stop him when he did, Dean would have done far more than just kiss him. Was Cas even interested in that? He'd said he loved him, but love didn’t equal sex. He’d never seen him interested in a guy before, but then he’d barely been interested in women either, for the most part at least. Was he only interested now because he was suddenly chock-full of human urges and raging hormones that his Grace could no longer suppress? 

Shit. What if Dean had taken advantage of him? How would they have come back from that?

During his break Dean sat on the edge of the stage and checked his messages. Why he thought Cas would have texted him when they’d specifically agreed on tomorrow, he wasn’t quite sure. Not wanting to catch anyone’s eye, because then they’d want to talk to him, he kept his head down, his eyes on his phone screen.

“Hey.” The smell of her perfume hit him first, and he reluctantly looked up. “Dean, right? I’m Beth.”

He nodded and forced a smile. It wasn't her fault he was a mess. “Nice to meet you, Beth.”

He deliberately didn’t say anything else, glancing back down at his phone instead. Tonight the flirting wasn’t going to add to his high, it was just going to annoy and exhaust him.

“You’re really great,” she said. “If you ever feel like giving me a private performance, here’s my number.”

Dean looked at the piece of paper in her hand with the meticulously neat number written on it. Once upon a time he’d have had to work for this, and Dean knew that this wasn't all the guitar and the singing, some of the interest he drew was down to his own blatant disinterest. He was a challenge, and attractive girls very often weren’t used to having that - creeps hassled them every time they went out.

“I’m flattered, Beth,” he said kindly. “But I’ve got someone at home waiting up for me.”

Beth didn’t need to know that that ‘someone’ was a sandy coloured dog with a waggy tail and breath that smelled like ass.

He’d been using that excuse for so long now that the lie just rolled off his tongue. He didn’t really remember when one night stands had started to wear thin, but at some point it had become just a little soul destroying playing the same game with each woman, saying the same tired old lines. It wasn’t what he wanted anymore. 

“Keep my number anyway,” she said with a wink. “It might not work out.”

He finished the set, thanked everyone for the beer they’d bought him, and breathed a sigh of relief when he stepped into the back room and could check his phone again in relative privacy.

"Waiting for a message from your girlfriend?" a voice came out of the shadows, making Dean jump. 

_Fleeting relative privacy._

James, the band's drummer, was a friendly but perpetually half-baked Irishman, a couple of years younger than Dean. He was sitting on the old communal staff sofa, a beer in one hand and his phone in the other.

"Boyfriend, then?" he asked, when Dean looked back down at his phone again without answering. 

"What? Uh, no. It's nothing. I'm fine." 

"Uh-oh. Something's not right. You need to talk? Drink? Fuck?" 

Dean rolled his eyes. It wasn't the first time James had offered, and once or twice Dean had actually considered taking him up on it. He was a good looking guy, pretty funny if you caught him when he was sober, and Dean had to admit the accent was a turn-on. But even if Dean _was_ interested, this was way too close to home for him. Ever since he was a teenager, his one big rule for sleeping with men was that it needed to be kept on the down low. Sammy came into this bar fairly regularly, people knew him here and people talked. It was what they did best. 

"I'm flattered James, but you'll have to make do with your right hand tonight."

"She's got a headache," James quipped, looking forlornly at his hand, as if it had broken his heart. 

"The grip you’ve got on those sticks, I can see why she might be faking that headache.”

Dean pulled on his coat, turning up his collar against the crisp night air that he knew would hit him as he stepped into the street.

"Seriously though, you know where I am,” James said, stepping up behind him. 

Whether he meant for talking or screwing, Dean wasn't sure, but he thanked him before leaving via the back door to avoid all the goodbyes he’d have had to make otherwise. 

He felt like shit. He hated how alone he felt as he walked down the deserted street and headed towards the bunker. Sam and Cas were right - he did need to find something to fill his life with, but other than hunting, he didn’t know what. He’d tried a relationship, but it had gone to hell and he’d nearly got them killed. Even before it had all gone wrong, the only time he hadn’t felt like an imposter was when he was taking care of Ben. He liked the being a dad part, but he wasn’t a PTA attending, lawn mowing, nine-to-five kinda guy. He’d tried that and he’d felt like he was wearing someone else's, ill-fitting skin.

He was two minutes away from the bunker, but the ache he felt in the pit of his stomach wasn’t easing up as he got closer to home. When he stepped inside he realised Sam and Eileen were already in bed and the sinking feeling got worse. This was usually when he started regretting not having taken up the various offers of company he'd had. He could have taken that chick home, or James. Screw it, why choose? He could have taken them both home together and made a party of it. But he wouldn’t. He hadn’t in years, and he refused to admit to himself why that was.

Maybe after a quick fuck, they'd both have agreed to watch The Witcher with him - he was only on the second episode. He could start over. Maybe he should just have screwed James there and then, on that sofa that had seen more than a little action over the years. What were the chances of anyone finding out, really? He needed to take the edge off this thing he had for Cas and maybe that was the way? 

Dean pulled off his coat and gave the heating an extra blast, not that it really made much of a difference. The security and technology here was insane, but of all the things the Bunker could do, somehow they hadn’t managed to work out how to keep the place warm.

“Miracle! Here boy!” 

Even Miracle had deserted him tonight. He was probably asleep by Sam and Eileen’s bed. If it was just Sam, Dean would have opened up his bedroom door and let Miracle come to him for cuddles, but now Eileen lived here he couldn’t really get away with that. 

As he walked past their door on his way to the bathroom, the sound of over the top, scripted moans came to his ears. Either they were watching porn, or they were re-watching Game of Thrones again. Either way, he definitely wasn’t going to knock on that door, any more than he was just going to sit at the table in the library and drink alone. Not tonight, anyway. 

Going to bed alone wasn’t unusual for Dean these days. This had been his life ever since Chuck had been defeated. He was on the outside of his brother's life, with barely a life of his own to cling to. He sighed, filled a glass with water and downed it in an attempt to stave off tomorrow's hangover. 

“Bed it is then,” he said out loud. 

_First sign of insanity, Dean._

He looked around the room before quickly turned into the hallway, hating the sudden paranoia he got that he wasn't alone. 

_And there's the second._

He stripped and slid between the cold sheets, ignoring the goose pimples that popped up all over his body. He could call Cas. It wasn’t late, was it? Cas didn’t sleep, so it wasn’t like Dean would wake him if he called. Fuck, he was needy. And horny. He'd never date himself. In fact, he'd have given himself the clichéd 'it's not you, it's me' speech and changed his phone number by now. God, he was a dick.

Porn. That's what he needed. He pulled the laptop out from underneath his bed, popped it on his bedside and turned on his side. What should he search for? Girl on girl had started to bore him years ago. There was a threesome at the bottom and one of the guys did have a look of Cas. He had his body type, and making the video bigger, he could sort of imagine Cas' face if he squeezed his eyes half-shut.

Dean groaned and dragged his hands down his face. He was meant to be distracting himself from Cas, not making it worse. 

Dean pulled on the string of his lamp, leaving the room lit by nothing but the screen of his laptop. He debated giving up on the porn - he wasn't even hard, and normally the very act of looking for porn had him going. The girl was a pretty, girl next door type, and the guy who looked like Cas had a fairly decent ass. Dean had always been a bit of an ass man. Both guys had stripped naked in the first three minutes of the clip, and Dean wondered if Real Cas would be circumcised like Porno Cas? Would his cock be as impressive? Porn stars weren't known for being very representative, he had to admit. 

Porno Cas was groping Other Guy, while Girl Next Door was straddling a chair and finding the entire situation far more erotic than was warranted, going by her exaggerated, enthusiastic moans - when Dean's phone rang. Dean muted the porn and sat up. 

“Hello?”

“Dean?” 

Just the sound of Cas’ voice had woken up the butterflies in his stomach.

“Who else would it be? _You_ called me! Everything okay?"

"Everything's fine. I just wanted to say goodnight."

Thank fuck Cas was just as needy as he was. Dean gave a sigh of relief and settled back against his pillows. 

"Did you get everything sorted with Kate?" 

"There was nothing to sort. I spent the evening watching Friends. I’m in bed now." 

**"** You passed up coming to the bar to see me play… for Friends?" 

"It's a very funny series, Dean." 

Dean shook his head. A movement on the screen catching his eye. Porno Cas was on his knees in front of Girl Next Door and he was going down on her with enthusiasm. Dean felt his cock becoming interested, not so much in the sex that was on the screen, but in the fact that he was talking to Cas _with_ sex on the screen. 

**"** Why are you in bed? You don’t sleep.”

“I adore my new bed. I would stay in this bed forever if I didn’t keep needing to get up to eat, drink and urinate."

“Oh yeah, talk dirty to me, Cas.”

“... Is that a request?”

Dean grinned. “It wasn’t, but now it is.”

“I don’t even know how I would do that, and I don’t think it would help us with being just friends.”

“I was kidding,” Dean said, ignoring the twitch his cock had given just at the thought of Cas talking dirty to him in that already practically pornographic voice of his. “Mostly.”

“I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be prudent to ask you to make an announcement whenever you’re going to make a joke. I’ve started to just assume that everything you say is a joke, and with you that could get me into trouble.”

“What's life without a little trouble?"

"Peaceful?" 

The Angel had a point. 

“Hey Cas?”

"Hmm?" 

"I’m really glad you called."

Cas made a pleased sound and Dean smiled.

“Hey Cas?”

“Yes?” 

“Do you like your new bed more than me?”

Cas hummed thoughtfully. “It is very comfortable. Egyptian cotton sheets, pillow-top mattress. Can you really compete?”

“Wow. Thrown over for a bed. What if I let you lie on my chest?”

There was a silence and Dean winced in anticipation of the shutdown he deserved. He sank further under the covers, as if it made him somehow disappear, even though he’d taken his phone under with him.

“I’ve never tried sleeping on your chest,” Cas murmured. “But unless you’re filled with fluff and have an 800 thread-count, I don’t think you’re going to win this.”

Dean was so very close to suggesting that Cas come over and try him out to see how he compared. Instead, at the last second, he changed his mind.

"Do you fancy coming over and watching The Witcher with me?" 

"... I'm in bed."

"So?"

"I’m warm."

"And?"

"And comfortable." 

"So you'll come?" 

"Your bed is hard and lumpy." 

"It's memory foam!" Dean pressed his bed with his hand. It was fine - he didn't know what people kept complaining about. It was a thousand times better than the crappy motel mattresses they’d slept on all their lives."

"You could come here," Cas suggested. "My bed is twice the size of yours - way better for TV watching." 

"When you move back in, bring it." 

"It will take up half of my room." 

"Do you really want me to come there? Cos if you do, I can be there in five." 

Cas sighed. "I'll come to you." 

Dean grinned triumphantly. He slid out of bed, the cold air nipping at his skin as he dug through his drawers for a fresh pair of jeans and a t-shirt. He probably shouldn't greet Cas naked, if they were going to keep their friendship uncomplicated. Tempting though it was. 

Ten minutes later, he was padding into the main room to greet Cas with a manly, unemotional, pat on the back. He could totally do this. 

"Popcorn?" he asked, opening a Cupboard and spotting some microwave bags. "We have salty, because that's the best kind; and sweet, because Eileen clearly has no taste." 

"I'll steal Sam's popcorn instead of Eileens," Cas said, taking it and wandering over to the microwave. 

"What makes you think neither of them are mine?" Dean asked defensively. He grabbed a couple of cold beers and handed one to Cas. "I buy food."

"You buy pie," Cas pointed out. "And beer." 

"I promise that if you move back in, I'll stock up on peanut butter and jelly." 

"A tempting offer." 

Dean listened to the popping of the popcorn, waiting for it to slow down, before crossing the kitchen to remove it from the microwave. He was still trying to keep his gaze on Cas as he pulled the puffed-up, steaming bag of popcorn out, and he hissed as the steam scalded his palm. 

"Let me take a look." 

Cas had turned on the cold tap and was reaching for his hand when Dean saw a figure to his right, in the very corner of his vision. It was a flash, barely there at all, but Dean had stupidly ignored his instincts earlier, and he was going to listen to them now. Something or someone had definitely been there.

"Did you see that?" Dean whipped his head around. 

"No, but I felt something." Cas had pulled an Angel blade from his sleeve and his eyes were scanning the room. Dean's scalded hand was still being held by the wrist, but the minor injury was momentarily forgotten

"It was a person. Well, it was person shaped and sized. This place is meant to be warded - what could get in here?"

Cas frowned, then went back to pulling Dean over to the sink to put his hand under the cold tap. 

"It's fine, Cas. It's just a bit pink," Dean muttered, trying to pull his wrist free. 

"Hold still!" 

"Cas, we've got some sort of ghost in here and you're worrying about a slightly sore hand!"

Cas closed his eyes, still holding Dean's hand under the tap. “Jack, if you’re listening and that was you, could you come down and actually talk to us?”

_Silence._

“It was a long-shot,” Cas shrugged. “He’s not answered me once though, so that doesn’t mean it wasn't him.”

Dean squeezed Cas’ arm. “I’m sorry, buddy.”

"Dean, can I test something?" Cas said, letting go of Dean's wrist and giving up making him hold his hand under the icy water. "It might not be pleasant." 

"Great. Why not?" Dean muttered. "I just love testing out 'might not be pleasant' things. It's my favourite pastime."

Cas took his uninjured, dry hand and using his thumb and forefinger, he found the right spot and squeezed hard. 

The pain was instant, dull and agonising. Dean yanked his hand back and glared at Cas. 

"Have I mentioned that I'm real glad I invited you over?" 

Cas wasn't looking at him. "Shh. Do you feel anything?" 

"The pain of you having crushed the pressure point in my hand? Yeah!" 

"No, do you feel like you're being watched?" 

"Are you telling me there is some sort of monster that only appears when I get hurt?" 

"I don’t know. For all we know one of us could have accidentally activated some protection that the Men of Letters set up. That’s what I’m checking," Cas said.

"I'm starting to think that Sam has the right idea, moving out." 

“Hand,” Cas demanded, putting his hand out for it. 

"I feel like if we're going to do this, we need some handcuffs, a riding crop and some whipped cream." 

Cas stared at him blankly. 

"Urgh. Fine!" Dean held his hand out for Cas to torture. 

Just like before, nothing happened, except Dean felt like he might like Cas just a little bit less. Maybe this was how he was going to get over Cas? Cas could squeeze his pressure points and soak him with ice cold water until Dean could be in a room with him without wanting to fuck him up against every wall in turn. 

Blissfully unaware of the very vivid pictures going through Dean’s mind, Cas was looking thoughtful. 

"It's either clever and knows we're screwing with it, or this is all alcohol and sleep deprivation and we're just going insane and imagining all of it. I'm not sure it _was_ linked to you burning your hand."

"No, but what's an evening without me being maimed?" Dean flicked Cas with water. "Let's go with sleep deprivation." 

He'd seen scarier things and he was a firm believer in waiting until there actually _was_ a problem before trying to deal with it. 

"I want to watch the Witcher," he said, picking up the popcorn by its corner and emptying it into a bowl, before leading the way back to his room. 

"Do we warn Sam and Eileen?" Cas asked. 

From the muffled moans coming from their room, now real instead of TV-fake, Dean rather thought they wouldn't appreciate the warning quite as much as they’d appreciate just being left alone. 

"Maybe not." 

Cas tipped his head to one side and then his eyes widened in understanding at a particularly loud groan from Sam. 

"Oh, I see. Maybe a note?" 

"Nah." Dean felt a bit silly now anyway. All the horrific monsters they'd dealt with and he was freaking out over a shadow. Besides, one of the Winchester Brothers should be having an uninterrupted night of sex, and sadly he wasn't in the running for that. 

Cas followed him the rest of the way down the hall and into the bedroom. Dean dropped onto the bed, quickly shutting his laptop before the screen saver could reveal what was hidden underneath it. 

"Our lives are so fucked up," Dean said, flicking the TV on and scrolling down to Netflix. "Anyone else would be freaked out and calling the Ghostbusters, and here we are, curling up in bed with a bag of popcorn."

"Just as long as no one calls the Ghostfacers," Cas muttered darkly. 

Dean rearranged the pillows along the back of his bed. Kicking off his boots, he got up and padded over to Cas, who had frozen awkwardly in the doorway. 

"You're going to be very uncomfortable if you're going to be watching it from there." 

Cas eyed the bed, looking at it like it was a forbidden treasure in an Aladdin's cave. One touch of its wooden frame and the treasure would turn to lava around their feet and the ceiling would cave in on them. 

"Cas, are you scared of me?" Dean's stomach twisted unpleasantly. 

"What? No, of course not, Dean," Cas denied, his gaze still on Dean's bed. 

"If anything ever happens between us, it will be because _you_ want it, and _you_ ask for it," Dean said deadly serious.

Cas gave him a helpless look that Dean couldn't decipher, but he did finally step through the door, allowing Dean to shut it behind him. 

He kicked off his shoes and placed them neatly in front of Dean's bedside table, before dutifully climbing onto the bed, still wearing his coat. 

"You're going to overheat," Dean pointed out, bemused. He watched Cas trying to untangle his coat from under his legs, fighting with it determinedly. "Or fall on the floor." 

"I'm fine," he declared stubbornly. "aren't you joining me?" 

"I'm worried you'll accidentally brain me," Dean observed dryly. "Take it off, Cas."

"Look, it's safe for you now." Cas patted the bed. 

"How many layers are you wearing?" Dean asked, fairly sure he could see the neck of what looked like a multicoloured woolen sweater peeking out from under Cas' coat. He was guessing that Cas was wrapped in at least three layers, and at this stage he wouldn't put it past him to be wearing a vest and long johns underneath his clothes too. 

"It's November!" Cas replied defensively, pulling his coat more tightly around himself. 

Dean shook his head. Joke was on Cas - he actually found that ridiculous coat of his sexy. 

"That's what these blankets are for." Dean demonstrated, pulling the covers back and sliding in underneath them. Well, as far underneath them as he could get while there was the solid weight of a stubborn Angel trapping them in place. 

“I dislike that I now constantly feel either too hot or too cold,” Cas grumbled, watching Dean as he tried to get comfortable. “It’s very distracting.”

"Being human in general is very distracting," agreed Dean wryly. “But do you know what helps with that? Not being a stubborn dick. Get under the covers, Cas!"

Cas ignored him pointedly, shuffling and adjusting his shoulders to get comfortable against the corner of the pillows, as he balanced on the very edge of the bed. 

Dean raised his eyes heavenwards and then yanked the covers hard so that Cas yelped and grabbed onto Dean's arm to keep himself from falling onto the floor. 

Cas fixed his most exasperated look on Dean, and then seeming to have become annoyed with his own bullheadedness, he sighed resignedly, conceding that Dean might have a point. He started to shrug out of his coat, glaring at Dean as he did. 

"I don't bite,” Dean growled in response to Cas' accusing look. 

Cas' gaze dropped to Dean's mouth and he raised an eyebrow in a way that plainly said, ' _Yes you do.'_

Dean grinned and shrugged. Okay, so he did, but he hadn't had any complaints. 

Folding his coat and placing it on the floor next to his shoes, Cas climbed back on top of the covers, his arms folded grumpily. 

"I swear that you were only put on this Earth to be a massive pain in my ass." He grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bag that Dean was offering him. “And I’m staying on top of the covers!”

Dean tried to hide his amusement as he picked up the remote. Occasionally Cas was completely ridiculous. 

"I see you steal Sam's Netflix too," Cas observed, putting a piece of popcorn into his mouth and chewing slowly. 

"The shows just seem better when Sam's paying for them."

Cas nodded in agreement. 

Dean watched Cas as he carefully chewed, frowning as he did. There were so many things his friend hadn't tried and Dean found himself hit with the urge to make a list so they could test out each and every one in turn. That was something he could happily fill his days with. And nights. 

"Is it supposed to stick in your teeth like this?" Cas pulled a face. 

Dean grinned. In that moment it hit Dean that whatever else was happening, he had Cas back and that was a win in anyone's book. All those tears, all that heartbreak, but it was okay now, because his Angel was next to him, chewing his popcorn in the exact same way that a bulldog would chew a wasp. 

"Don't ever change, man," Dean laughed, before pressing play. 

***

The third episode had finished twenty minutes ago and Dean knew he should probably sleep. Cas should either go home or go back to the room he had here - either way, they should go their separate ways for the night. But Dean didn't want that, so he was stalling. 

"C'mon, man. Make a decision! It's life or death!"

Cas was finally leaning against the pillows, looking relaxed. 

"Fine," Cas sighed. "I'd have intercourse with Rowena, marry Jodie and kill Crowley." He paused, glaring at Dean for even making him think about it. "I don't see the point of this game. Surely if you marry someone, you would be having intercourse with them on a regular basis. In which case, I would rather marry Rowena. Not that there's anything wrong with Jodie, although there _is_ something very wrong with Crowley."

Cas folded his arms and threw an accusing look at Dean. "I dislike this game. It makes me feel guilty and it objectifies our friends. We can't ever tell them we've played this." 

“Goes without saying,” Dean said with a shrug. "You got the hots for the Queen of Hell?”

"Not especially, no. But I like her hair and her accent, and she professes to know things - she would be a good teacher." 

_Fuck._ Now all Dean could think about was how, if Cas wanted a teacher, he would give his right arm to be that for him. Oh, the things he could teach that Angel. He let his eyes drift to Cas' mouth and felt his jeans become uncomfortably tight. 

"Same question to you," Cas said, taking a mouthful of the beer. Dean wondered how close to drunk he was - the guy was a bit of a lightweight these days. "Assuming you're attracted to both men and women?" 

Dean felt his eyes grow wide. What the fuck was he meant to say to that? No one had ever outright asked him that before. On the one hand, surely Cas knew he was? He'd seen him with girls, and surely he couldn't have missed the fact that Dean's tongue had been in his mouth earlier? He'd never said it out loud. He _couldn't_ say it out loud. 

Dean took a long drink, avoiding Cas' gaze. "Different people, Cas. Jodie feels like family." 

"Daphne, Velma and Scooby Doo," Cas declared without hesitation, a challenge in his eyes. 

Dean groaned. "C'mon man. You know I couldn't kill Scooby!" 

"Dean, are you telling me that you'd kill off Velma or Daphne to either marry or have intercourse with a cartoon dog?" 

"I mean, I couldn't just… it's a sick question! I'm not icing Scooby! And for the record, the word is sex, Cas. Screwed. Fucked. Bumped uglies. Did the no pants dance. Stop using the word intercourse! You wouldn't go up to someone you fancied and ask them to have intercourse with you! It's not sexy." 

Cas rolled his eyes. Dean noticed that he'd been doing that a lot more since he'd come back. 

"You're not going to distract me from your very disturbing answer, Dean." 

"Okay, your turn. Ruby, Meg and me." 

Cas froze. "What?" 

"C'mon, Cas. Fuck, marry, kill." 

"I'd kill _you_ for making me play this game." 

"Is that your actual answer?" 

Cas leaned back into the pillows and closed his eyes. If he was attempting to come off as relaxed, the arms that were firmly folded over his chest would have given him away instantly. 

"I'd kill Ruby. I've never liked her for what she did to Sam." 

Dean nodded, waiting. 

"You know, jealousy does not become you. Meg is in Hell," Cas murmured almost sleepily, as if closing his eyes had made him tired. Dean knew he was faking it - he didn't need to sleep. 

Frowning, Dean was momentarily distracted from trying to get Cas to choose him over Meg. "Wait, Hell? Why isn't she in The Empty?" 

"There's nothing left in there anymore. Jack's explosion woke everyone up, and the noise was driving the Empty to insanity. So Jack made it a deal. It doesn't get any more souls, every soul it did have was set free, and The Empty has eternal peace." 

"Good and evil, both set free?" 

Cas nodded. 

"Angel and Demon?" 

"Yes." 

"So what was the point of me hunting literally thousands of demons over the years, if they're all walking about free now? Are you telling me I've wasted my entire fucking life? That all this shit - _all_ of it has been for nothing?" 

Cas opened his eyes and sat up, putting a placating hand on Dean's arm. 

"You misunderstand me. I meant free of The Empty, not free to roam Earth. The moment Jack became God, he wanted to rebuild. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory - it's all been changed. Most people who are sent to Hell are put in cages now, like they were in Heaven before. Memory cages where, depending how good or evil they were, depending on how well they've redeemed themselves, they are left to play out their best or worst memories for Eternity. A few are free to roam Hell - Rowena and Crowley make those choices together, although last I heard, they were still fighting like cat and dog over every decision."

"So you're saying Meg is in a room in Hell, living out kissing you over and over again?" It shouldn't have pissed him off, but it did. 

"No, that's _not_ what I'm saying. I haven't been to visit her, so I really can't say what memory she is likely living in." 

"Oh, it'll be that one." Dean tore at the label on the bottle of his beer.

"I'm sure Meg has better memories to explore than that." 

"I don't know, it looked pretty intense to me." 

The exasperated and knowing look that Cas gave him almost made him shut up. Almost. 

"You know…" Dean started.

"Dean, do you want me to kiss you?" 

Dean choked on the mouthful of beer he'd just taken. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. 

"What?" 

"Do you want me to kiss you like I kissed Meg?" 

_Yes. No. Fuck._

"I didn't say…" 

"No, you didn't. What you actually said was that kissing me was a dangerous, terrible idea." 

"That's not what I said." Dean folded his arms defensively, his jaw clenching.

"Admittedly I'm a bit drunk, but you did say that. And ever since you said that, you've been flirting almost constantly. I swear that when you look at me sometimes, it's like you want to do it again."

Cas eyed Dean seriously. "Do you?" 

"It's not about whether or not I want to, Cas. Just play the frickin' game!" 

"I see." Cas got up onto his knees on the bed and, using Dean's shoulders for support, he straddled Dean. "Fine." 

"Cas?" Dean knew he sounded panicked, but that was because he was. Because he wasn't going to stop at kissing Cas this time. He wasn't going to be able to hold back. He needed him more than he'd needed anyone before. 

Dean could think of nothing but bucking up against Cas, lifting his hips and closing the gap between them, where Cas' ass was hovering just an inch above his lap. If Cas sat down exactly where he was, he'd be right on Dean's rock hard cock. 

"Then I would kill Ruby," Cas said, momentarily confusing Dean, who had forgotten entirely what the question even was. "Because she's an abomination." 

Dean shrugged. Sure - why not? Cas could have said anything at that point and Dean would have been agreeing with it. 

Cas bent down over Dean, and as he did, he brought his ass lower, so there was just a brief moment of friction that made Dean suck in a breath of air and hold it. His hands came up, gripping Cas' hips, trembling at the thought of pulling Cas down onto him, hard, repeatedly, fucking through their clothes. 

"I would have intercourse with Meg," he said, his mouth inches from Dean's, "and I would marry you."

Dean couldn't meet his eyes. He really shouldn't have asked - he'd known the answer before he'd posed the damn question, but he'd always been so jealous of Meg. 

Then Cas was cupping Dean's face with both hands, tipping it, forcing Dean to look at him, to meet his eyes.

"Because marriage isn't just one quick _fuck,_ Dean. It's a lifetime of fucking each other. Day and night, over and over and over again. We'd never have to stop." 

Dean made an undignified sound in the back of his throat. 

"You were right…" Cas said thoughtfully, leaning close to his ear. 

"What about?" he asked hoarsely. 

"Fucking is a sexier word than intercourse." 

And with that, Cas was back to sitting on the bed. The only difference this time was that Cas was no longer keeping to his side - their arms were brushing, their legs touched. 

_Shit._ Dean fought to control his breathing, clenching his hands into tight fists in an effort not to reach out and grab Cas. It was all he could do not to pin him to the bed and fuck him until he was a writhing, wordless, moaning-

"Are you alright, Dean?" 

_Really? Fucking really?_

"Oh, I'm great. Never better."

Dean eyed the bulge in his jeans that even Cas at his most oblivious couldn't miss. 

_Fuck it._

“Cas… Would you… uh?”

_Smooth._

Cas tipped his head to the side in the way that Dean had once told him made him look like an Alsatian who didn't quite understand what his owner was saying. Cas hadn't appreciated the comparison nor its implications. 

Dean sighed and tried again. 

"This is ridiculous." He cleared his throat and didn't quite meet Cas' eyes. "Stay with me tonight?" 

At the start of the night Dean had promised to himself that he wouldn't ask, but now Cas was here, Dean didn't want him to leave. He didn't want him to leave at all, ever again, but as a short term solution this worked. He wasn't asking him for sex. If that happened, then fucking Hallelujah, but that wasn't why he wanted him here. Torturing himself had risen to a whole different level.

Cas opened his mouth to answer, but Dean cut him off. 

"Not… for that. I mean, just to sleep - there's no pressure at all. I know there's whatever the hell this is between us, and it's complicated. But, I really don't want you to go." 

"I can make up the bed in my old room," Cas said slowly. 

"I was thinking more… In _my_ bed? 

"Dean…" Cas was looking at him warily. "This is a terrible idea. You don't want to risk our friendship, but my sleeping in your bed is as big a risk as they get." 

"I've shared beds with Sammy when we could only afford one. It doesn't have to be anything except two guys keeping each other company. Teenage girls do it! If you want it to be extra-platonic we'll do each other's nails and I'll braid your hair." 

"You're really not selling this." Cas' lips twitched with the smile he was trying to fight. 

"I’ll make you breakfast in bed in the morning.”

"Sam will make breakfast in the morning," Cas corrected. 

"I'll watch any crappy comedy show you like," Dean offered. 

“Is this how you convince women to come home with you?”

“No… but if it would work I could try telling you how gorgeous you are?”

The laughter faded from Cas’ eyes and Dean frowned, trying to read Cas' face. What had he said wrong? 

“I’m well aware that you don’t find me attractive,” Cas said stiffly. “That would be a ridiculous thing to say.”

“Cas,” Dean sighed. “That’s not true, but I don’t know how to argue with you about that without making this really uncomfortable for you.”

He pulled his knee up underneath him and turned to look at Cas properly. He was staring straight ahead at the blank TV screen, no expression at all on his face.

“I’m sorry, Cas. It’s a stupid idea. The bed is too small, I snore and Sammy would be a pain in the ass about it if he knew where you'd slept.”

Cas shook his head. 

“It's fine. I’ll stay if you still want me to?”

“Yeah,” Dean nodded, feeling almost shy about it now. This was ridiculous - he was a grown man. He got out of bed, conscious of what he was concerned might become a permanent boner if Cas kept pulling this sort of shit. He went to the little sink in the corner of his room to brush his teeth.

“I’ve got a spare toothbrush,” he offered, chucking it over to Cas, who caught it deftly.

Dean reached for his belt.

"I'm staying clothed," Cas said firmly, from the bed. 

"Okay." Dean was ready to accept any condition, as long as it meant Cas didn't leave.

"And so are you." 

"I never suggested otherwise," Dean said, his fingers still continuing to undo his belt before moving down to the button at the top of his jeans. 

"Dean!" Cas glared pointedly as his now unfastened jeans, all the more obscene because Dean was very obviously still hard. 

"What? You've seen how I sleep in company a thousand times before. I can't sleep in jeans. I'm sure you'll be able to resist my bare and sexy man legs." 

Cas' lips twitched. "... bare and sexy man legs?" 

Dean felt Cas’ eyes on him and he pushed his jeans down his legs purposely a little slower than he would have done if he was on his own. He stepped out of them and then looking Cas in the eye he slowly ran a finger from ankle to knee, pouting and waggling his eyebrows in a comically suggestive fashion.

"How about that, eh?" he grinned, winking at Cas. "Does that do it for ya?" 

"How could anyone resist that?" Cas deadpanned, breaking into the toothbrush packaging and padding over to the sink. 

Dean grinned and went down the hallway to the toilet. He was in there for longer than he would normally have been, as he'd had to will his cock to half mast first, and knowing Cas was waiting in his bed for him, it hadn't been the easiest of jobs. 

As he walked back up the hallway, he paused outside the door. There were voices. Two, maybe three, all whispering frantically at the same time. Then, as if a switch had been flicked, there was nothing. 

By the time Dean threw open the door to his room, Cas was gone, his shoes and coat still sitting neatly by Dean's bedside table. 


	9. Friends Don't

When Cas opened his eyes back in the Bunker, he realised immediately that his disappearance hadn't gone unnoticed. Earlier, apart from the glow of Dean's bedside lamp and the dim emergency floor lights in the hallway, the place had been in darkness. Now, what surely could only have been five minutes later, every light in the Bunker was on and Cas could hear the familiar sound of Sam and Dean's bickering getting closer and closer. 

Cas groaned quietly. _Fabulous._

"You don't even know where to start looking!" 

"Everywhere! Anywhere! He just told me Crowley is running Hell with Rowena, so we'll call them. We've got to start somewhere! You pray to Jack again - I need to get dressed."

_Shit._

"Hello Dean. Sam." 

"Cas!" 

Dean crossed the room in two strides and then his arms were wrapped around him so tightly that Cas genuinely wondered if he would crack his ribs. The body pressed against his was trembling - not like the needy, desperate trembles he'd felt before, these shudders weren't pleasant, weren't needy. These were his body trying so hard not to fall apart, to not let even one tensed muscle relax and calm. 

Cas ran a reassuring hand down his back, conscious of Sam's eyes on them. 

"Hey, it's okay," Cas soothed. 

"Don't you _ever_ do that to me again!" Dean snapped, his eyes flashing. He gripped Cas' shoulders, holding him at arm's length. "Where the _Hell_ were you?" 

"I just went out onto the doorstep for some fresh air. I didn’t think - I’m sorry."

Dean's fingers dug into his shoulders at the lie, his jaw clenching, his head shaking, ' _No.'_

"Without your coat and shoes?" Sam asked from the doorway, disbelief evident in his voice. "For twenty minutes?" 

_Okay, so maybe his sense of time had been a little off._

"I truly didn’t mean to worry you. Everything is fine."

Sam threw up his hands. "Whatever. It's way too late to deal with your evasiveness and his angry wife routine. I'm going to tell Eileen to call off the search." 

The bang of Dean's bedroom door slamming shut echoed around the room and both men winced. 

"I interrupted him in the middle of getting busy with Eileen," Dean explained, still not releasing his grip on Cas' shoulders. "He's not impressed." 

"I see. Then I'm even more sorry. Shall we go to bed now?" 

"No, Cas. We _shan't_ go to bed now. We _shall_ stay here and talk about where you were for the last twenty minutes. This time without you lying like a five year old who's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar!" 

Cas sighed. "Dean, do you trust me?" 

"I'm really trying, Cas." Dean's eyes pleaded with Cas to make this easy on him and Cas desperately wished he could. 

"Then try to trust me when I tell you that what you need to know is that I got overwhelmed and I went to stand outside. I should have taken my shoes and coat, but it really didn't seem worth it. Can we drop this now?" 

"I don't even know what to do with that shit," Dean threw his hands up in the air, unconsciously mirroring the same frustrated gesture his brother had made minutes before. "I heard voices in my room, one of them was _yours_ and then you were gone!" 

"That was the television you heard," Cas said slowly and clearly, willing Dean to understand what he _wasn't_ saying. 

"Bullshit. I turned it off myself!" 

Cas placed his palms flat against Dean's chest and pushed him backwards. Dean stumbled, resisted for a moment, and then, eyes locked with Cas', he allowed himself to be walked backwards until his back hit the wall. 

"Trust me," Cas growled. "Why is your first reaction always to doubt me! I'm on your side! I don't know how else I can prove my devotion to you without literally, physically tethering my soul to yours!" 

Dean's head fell back against the wall as he seemed to look to the Heavens for assistance. He let out a long, weary sigh and looked at Cas. 

"Do you think you'd have me pinned to this wall right now if I didn't trust you? But can you blame me for worrying? This feels really fucking familiar, Cas. If you're going to kill me, then I wish you'd get it over with. I won't even fight it this time."

The despondency in his voice felt like knives stabbing into Cas' soul. Where was Dean's fight? 

"Why would I bring you back just to kill you weeks down the line?" 

"I don't know, but we've been here before and I'm tired, Cas. I can't keep doing this."

"I know you need peace - you _deserve_ peace. I'm not trying to screw that up. I swear to you that I'm not going to hurt you, Dean. Wherever you think I was, I _can_ tell you that I've not been up in Heaven killing copy after copy of you, I promise."

"That's how they trained you, _brainwashed_ you into trying to kill me?" Dean's hands clenched into fists by his sides, and Cas reached for them, taking them in his. With gentleness that seemed to be in conflict with his anger, Cas started stroking his thumbs over Dean's knuckles, trying to soothe Dean and make him relax them. 

"It doesn't matter now. It didn't work - it couldn’t work. The point is that I'm not a danger to anyone now. But if you're worried, I understand and I can go back to my apartment. It’s late and we can talk after we’ve rested." 

"You disappear, worry the crap outta me, won’t tell me where you were or who you were with, and now you want to leave again? That's great. Just great." 

Dean shook his hands free, glaring at Cas accusingly.

"I don't _want_ to leave. I want us to go to bed. I'm really tired." 

"Yeah, lying through your teeth will do that to you. It's pretty exhausting!" 

"Dean!" Cas snapped, pressing him hard into the wall by his shoulders. "I need you to look at me and when you do, I need you to remember that I'm not the Angel who was struggling with his new-found emotions; I'm not the Angel who was torn between two paths; I'm not the Angel who didn't know what he wanted or needed." 

Cas fought the tears that stung behind his eyes. He hated that he was hurting Dean, he hated that Dean didn’t trust him and he hated that their lives still weren’t free of this crap. Where was their happily ever after? Where was Dean’s? When would it all just stop? 

Taking a fistful of Dean’s T-shirt in his hand, he pushed the words past the lump in his throat. "I am the _man_ who has fought by your side on more occasions than I can remember. I am the _man_ who would die for you unquestioningly. I am the _man_ who chose to fall for you. I know who I am and whose side I'm on - it's _yours._ That will never change, Dean. All I'm asking is that you trust me. Please trust me."

Dean squeezed his eyes tightly shut, his jaw set, but his bottom lip trembling in a way that made Cas want to slide his thumb over it, kiss it, soothe it with his own mouth. He understood the conflict inside Dean - nothing was ever safe and simple. Everyone betrayed him, even Cas himself in the past. It was so difficult to just let go and trust. Maybe it was too much to expect. 

_I'm sorry. Come to bed. Let me show you._

Out loud he said, "I became overwhelmed. I stepped outside. Now I need to go to bed. With _you._ " 

Dean opened his eyes to look at Cas, watchful and wary, like a dog that had been kicked one too many times and had finally given up on the entire human race.

"Why are you in such a rush to go to bed?"

"Why do you think?" Cas asked, his eyes wide, hoping Dean would see the plea in them. _Trust me Dean. Shut up._

Dean frowned, then purposely unclenching his jaw, relaxing his shoulders and schooling his face into a relaxed, almost conspiratorial expression, he changed tack. "Come on, Cas. No more secrets. Talk to me. Is this something to do with the weird shit in th-" 

Cas glared at Dean as he spoke, then with an annoyed growl he crushed his lips to Dean's. It wasn't tender, it wasn't romantic, it wasn't even all that passionate. But it was covering Dean's mouth so he couldn't keep _saying things_. 

The kiss was hard, almost punishing in it’s frustration and Dean wasn't kissing him back - his lips were frozen in a hard, firm line, hands braced against his chest. He wasn't pushing him away or even holding him back, just putting up an unconscious barrier. When Cas finally pulled back his eyes were drawn to Dean's lips, swollen from the bruising kisses and turned down in disapproval. 

"What the hell has gotten into you?" Dean spat, yanking his t-shirt up to scrub his lips on the hem. Cas' heart sank.

He needed Dean to stop talking. He could storm out and go back to his apartment, but Dean didn't deserve that. He'd done nothing wrong. But if Cas stayed, Dean would keep digging, prying, _talking._

"Please don't hate me," Cas pleaded. He reached out one hand to touch Dean's cheek, but Dean caught his wrist before Cas' hand could reach him, holding it in a bruising grip. 

"Let me make this up to you," Cas pleaded, and using his other hand, Cas reached for Dean's hip. Lowering his eyelashes to look up at Dean through them, Cas fixed Dean with a look that he hoped came across as very obviously seductive.

The profound confusion on Dean's face turned to one of horror and misplaced understanding, as he came to the conclusion that Cas was about to try to seduce him into capitulation. He shook his head from side to side, as if denying Cas’ betrayal.

Cas let his thumb caress Dean's hip bone, tracing hard lines. He found a hollow that felt just the right shape and size for his thumb to slide into, and he rubbed circles in it, letting his thumb disappear a quarter of an inch under the waistband of Dean's boxers. It felt scandalous, and despite the situation, it had Dean's breath coming out in unsteady puffs. 

"Cas," Dean's voice broke on Cas' name, his teeth biting down on his lip until they drew tiny beads of blood. 

_No. Wait. Listen._

"I could try out a move from that movie we watched," Cas said, offering up a smile that it physically hurt him to paste onto his face. "To make it up to you properly." 

"What movie?" Dean's voice was hoarse, his grip on Cas' wrist even more painful than before. 

Cas faked a seductive smile, looking up into Dean's eyes, trying to ignore the hurt, and disappointment that he was detecting in the lines of his mouth and eyes. It wasn't meant to be happening like this - this was just meant to get his point across while still being convincing enough. It was all going wrong. 

"You know, the one with the beauty pageant?" Cas expanded desperately. 

Dean's eyes widened in a, ' _What the fuck?'_ expression and Cas didn't blame him. 

"Are you high?" 

Cas let his hand slide up from Dean's hip, stroking his skin with his thumb, trying to reassure him with each calming stroke. 

"Cas, don't do this," Dean implored. He didn't stop him, didn't fight, but his eyes were red-rimmed, his heart was breaking at Cas using him, lying to him, wounding him with every caress of his skin. 

Cas gritted his teeth, his hand freezing in place, before he slowly withdrew it. 

"The movie," Cas ground out, "with the woman who wasn't considered attractive to a socially acceptable standard, even though all that they seemed to do to 'fix' her was make her less hairy." 

Cas had ranted about that aspect of the movie for half the night, until Dean had threatened to wax _his_ legs if he didn't shut up. 

Dean's face scrunched up. "Are you talking about Miss Congeniality?" 

Cas nodded enthusiastically, letting out a relieved breath. "Yes! Remember the, um, seduction technique she uses in that film?" 

Dean's eyes blatantly said he didn't, and for good reason - there hadn't been one. 

"You're going to play music on half full water glasses to seduce me?" 

Dean was watching him through narrowed eyes, the entirety of his beautiful face screwed up in absolute confusion. 

"No." Cas bent close to Dean's ear, breathing into it seductively. "Just call me Miss Jersey." 

_Please understand. Things have changed and we’re being watched._

Cas stepped back, trying to pull his hand free from Dean, but he held onto Cas so firmly it was like his hand had turned to marble around his wrist. Cas gave up struggling, his hand only hurting more the longer he tried. If this didn't work, he was going to have to walk out as the only way to shut down the conversation. 

To his abject relief, Cas saw the exact moment that it clicked in Dean's mind. His face cleared, his expression softening. The look of devastation faded, to be replaced with a seductive half smile that Cas had seen Dean throw on in bars so many times. He'd never realised before how fake the smile had been. 

"I think you mean Miss _New_ Jersey," he corrected. 

_Pedantic pain in the ass._

"Yes. Yes."

_So shut up and stop drawing attention to us!_

The hand that had been holding Cas' wrist in a death-grip softened and gentled until Dean was cradling Cas' hand almost tenderly instead. He drew it to his chest, forcing Cas to step closer, and he pressed Cas’ sore hand against his chest with a tenderness that there had been no sign of at all moments ago.

"Alright," Dean murmured, pulling their joined hands up to his lips and brushing an apologetic kiss against Cas' knuckles before letting him go. "We can do that." 

"Good. Great." Cas wondered if it was normal for your hand to be an erogenous zone. Dean's lips had sent shocks of pleasure straight down his arm with one simple brush of his lips. 

"I'm sorry," Dean said. Then he was wrapping his hand around the back of Cas' neck and looking into his eyes earnestly. "I'm an idiot. I know that when things get too much for you that you like to step outside."

"You're not an idiot." _Just occasionally slow on the uptake._ "I didn't mean to worry you." 

With his free hand, Dean palmed Cas' hip and pulled him firmly against him, making Cas flinch at the sudden sharp contact. Cas stood there for a moment, his eyes widening at the way he could feel the heat of Dean’s body through his thin t-shirt and boxers. 

Now Dean understood at least some of what the issue was, he seemed to be throwing himself into his role with much more enthusiasm than Cas had expected. He was bending closer and closer to Cas' mouth and Cas began to panic that he'd actually gone a step beyond understanding and was now going much too far the other way. This wasn't some sort of 'make out against the lamppost until the police have gone past' type of situation. All he needed Dean to do was shut up about his brief disappearance.

"Dean," Cas protested as Dean's lips ghosted over his. "I'm sure this wasn't in the movie. This isn't… isn't necessary." 

Dean's mouth brushed over Cas' lips again and again, each almost-kiss more firm than the last one, each one stealing Cas' breath away, making him light headed, making him forget everything except Dean's perfect mouth, the hand sliding up from his hip, under his t-shirt and sweater. 

"I'll decide that," Dean murmured against his mouth.

"This is a really bad idea," Cas murmured, shivering against the fingers that were slowly exploring his skin. 

"What about the thing she did in Poughkeepsie? Is that something you fancy trying out with me?" Dean said, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss to Cas' mouth. "I'm down for that any time you say the word." 

Poughkeepsie = run. _Except there's nowhere to run to._

When Cas didn't immediately answer, Dean flipped their positions, pinning Cas against the wall and he was instantly grateful for Dean's body pressed hard up against him, because when Dean kissed along his jaw to his neck, Cas' legs gave up on holding him up entirely. 

"Dean," Cas moaned, his eyes falling shut again, his hands sliding into Dean's hair, holding his head in place as he sucked the skin just under his ear. 

Dean pulled back and Cas whimpered in disappointment. 

"Concentrate, Cas. Yes or no?" 

"No," Cas whimpered. "The Poughkeepsie move is great, but I don't think either of us are, um, flexible enough for it. I'm sorry."

"Okay. That's okay," Dean murmured, stroking his hand down Cas's back. "Happy to follow your lead. Whatever you need from me, you can have."

_If only that was true._

"I really appreciate that," Cas murmured between Dean's soft, barely there kisses that were driving him mad. Every time Cas was tempted into deepening the kiss, Dean pulled away and started kissing his neck, face or jaw instead. 

"Dean," Cas moaned. "This is killing me. Stop."

"I didn't kiss you back before and that needs putting right." His mouth was on Cas' stubbled jaw again, kissing, nipping gently, moving slowly and deliberately towards his mouth. 

"It's okay." Cas' eyes had drifted closed and both hands had come up to twist themselves in the material of Dean's t-shirt, trying desperately to ground himself somehow, to hold himself up as each pass of Dean's lips made his legs feel weaker. “I understand.”

"It's not okay," Dean argued, very deliberately rolling his hips against Cas', making him groan out loud against Dean's mouth.

_Fucking exhibitionist._

Dean slid his fingers up Cas’ neck and into his hair, scraping his nails along his neck until Cas shuddered violently against Dean’s body as it pinned him against the wall. 

“Dean. _Please_.” 

It wasn’t the right time, was completely inappropriate and it was utterly reckless. But it felt like with every touch of his lips, Dean was healing the pain he’d felt earlier when he’d thought Cas was betraying him. How could Cas deny him that? How could Cas ever truly deny Dean anything?

Dean's kiss, when he finally stopped teasing, brushing against and slowly tormenting Cas' lips, was Earth shattering. As his lips pressed more firmly, Dean's talented mouth coaxed Cas to kiss him back, to match his level of intensity, heat, passion. Sucking Cas' bottom lip, nipping at it, lathing it with his tongue to soothe it, only to gently nibble at it again - Dean was breathing hard, making tiny sounds at the back of his throat, pressing his very obvious arousal into Cas' hip. 

Hot breath against his lips, Dean’s tongue teasing, licking into his mouth - Cas felt himself surrender and with a sob of need and desperation, he opened himself to Dean, letting him in, groaning into his hot, wet mouth at the feel of their tongues finally sliding together. All Cas could do was cling on tight and _feel_ as Dean plundered his mouth. 

Cas had never been kissed like this before, had never known that kisses could even _be_ like this. His mouth wasn’t being kissed, it was being seduced. Every slide of Dean’s tongue against his, every flick and lick, every caress, every deliberate, teasing moment was driving him higher and higher. All there was was Dean - his smell, his touch, his small, needy moans that sounded so pornographic to Cas’ ears that they felt like they were the most sinful thing Cas had ever heard.

He clung to Dean, his hands seeming to move on their own, sliding under Dean's t-shirt, feverishly mapping his back and feeling the hot skin under his hands, the way Dean’s muscles moved under his fingers as he pressed into him again and again. Cas pulled Dean even harder to him, arching against him, letting his fingers explore and tease. He dug his nails in when Dean licked the roof of his mouth, making Dean instinctively and uncontrollably buck his hips against Cas.

Dean tore his mouth away from Cas', his breath coming in pants. He pressed their foreheads together and groaned, closing his eyes as if in pain at Cas’ answering moan. 

“Shit, Cas. What is it that you do to me?” 

He dropped another kiss onto Cas’ mouth. Then another. He brought unsteady hands up to Cas' face, holding his cheeks gently as he kissed him again. 

“You’re incredible,” Cas whispered against Dean's lips, finally finding his voice.

"When you kiss me, I will _always_ kiss you back," Dean vowed, his fingers reverently tracing Cas’ cheeks, forehead, eyebrows, lips, as if committing them to memory. "And whatever you need from me, I swear to you, it’s yours. Anything."

Cas reached for Dean’s face, cupping his cheek, stroking trembling fingers over his kiss-swollen lips.

“Dean, you have to tell me you understand that _this_ isn’t something you have to do? Don’t do this for my sake. It’s not something I need.” 

Except it was. If Dean pulled away from him now, he’d be lost.

_Tell me this isn't all an act? Even you're not that good, surely?_

“Is it something you _want_?”

Cas looked helplessly at Dean and nodded.

Dean pulled back then, his eyes dark, glinting with something Cas couldn't quite read. There was a sharpness in them that Cas was baffled that Dean was still capable of. Cas could barely speak in sentences when they were this close. 

Cas' head fell back against the wall with a jarring thump that he hoped would knock some sense into his lust-addled brain. 

"Come to bed?" Cas begged, asking for what felt like the twentieth time. 

Dark eyes glittered. 

“Yes.”

Cas ducked out from under Dean's arm, but before he could take a step, Dean had grabbed his hand and was leading him there instead.

"You're wearing too much," Dean said gruffly, and he reached for the bottom of Cas' sweater. 

"You never liked my sweaters," Cas joked nervously, lifting his arms over his head so Dean could pull the sweater off, grabbing at the hem of his t-shirt when it threatened to go with it. "Any excuse to get me out of them." 

Dean smiled. It was a small smile, but after all the fake ones he'd flashed earlier, it made Cas' heart sing to see it. 

"They're freaking adorable, Cas," Dean said, looking at him fondly. "But I've gotta say, I prefer you with less clothes on." 

Cas' sweater was on the floor in a colourful heap of wool, but Dean wasn't done. He slid his hands down Cas' sides until he reached his waist, and then he followed the belt round to the buckle at the front. Cas' hands came down to stop him, resting his own hands on top of his.

_Not now._

"You can't go to bed in jeans," Dean explained. "I'm helping." 

The look in Dean's eyes suggested it was rather more than good citizenship, but Cas dropped his hands and allowed Dean to unbuckle his belt, watching Dean pull it free of his jeans and drop it on top of his sweater.

Dean's fingers worked at the button at the top of Cas' jeans, popping it, then then hesitating as he brushed against the zip. 

"Is this okay?" Dean asked softly. Dean's gaze didn't leave Cas' face, watching as Cas gave a jerky nod of consent, resting his hands on Dean’s shoulders and forcing himself to think about anything other than Dean’s hands undressing him. Anything else. Anything at all. He had to stay in control. 

Cas knew he shouldn't be hard right now, knew it wasn't why they were actually going to bed together - he had to explain to Dean. But when Dean drew the zip down with deliberate slowness, brushing lightly and inadvertently over his aching cock, Cas' fingers clenched on Dean’s shoulders as a shock of pleasure shot through him. He sucked in a shaky breath of air. 

Dean's fingers hooked into the top of his jeans and pulled them slowly down, sinking down with them as he did until he was crouched by Cas' feet. Cas swallowed thickly, watching Dean through hooded eyes as he dragged the denim down each leg in turn. 

Warm hands slid down Cas' calves, pausing to raise his eyebrows at Cas' mud and leaf caked socks. Throwing Cas a look that said, 'on the doorstep, my ass' he lifted each of his feet in turn, pulling the dirty socks off, throwing them deftly into his own laundry basket. 

Now matching Dean's sleeping attire, clad in far too little clothing given the current temperature, Cas shivered from the cold. At least he thought it was from the cold - it could equally have been from having Dean on his knees in front of him looking up at him with all kinds of suggestion in his eyes. 

Cas watched Dean as he slowly and deliberately raked his eyes down Cas' body. His eyes widened in question and Cas shook his head almost imperceptibly, unsure if he'd read Dean's question right. On the off chance he had, it really wasn’t the time to debate the drawbacks and merits of becoming sexually intimate. 

Dean shrugged and rose to his feet easily. Throwing back the covers he climbed into bed. 

"I'm sorry for doubting you, Cas," he said seriously, glancing up as he sorted his pillows into the right positions. "If I ever do that again, you slap me down, okay?" 

Cas laughed breathlessly. "Sounds fun. Like the babysitter and the Pizza Man?" 

Dean froze and then wetting his lips nervously, said, “That wasn’t what I meant…”

“Sure, Dean,” Cas nodded, teasingly.

Dean gave Cas a look. "And which do you think you are, the babysitter or the Pizza Man?" 

"I think I would have to try both to decide," Cas replied thoughtfully. 

Dean blinked. "Are you winding me up?" 

Cas's eyes twinkled with amusement and Dean scowled. 

"Come to bed, Cas."

Cas eyed him. "You're right in the middle, taking up _all_ the room." 

"You think I'm letting you out of my sight again? We're cuddlin' tonight, Cas." 

Cas hesitated and Dean sighed quietly. 

"We don't have to if-”

“I want to,” Cas interrupted. “But do you mind if I put some music on?" 

Dean shrugged. "Go ahead." 

Cas fiddled with the radio stations until he found a station playing soft rock. He smiled at Dean's nod of approval. 

When he turned back to the bed, just for one moment he allowed himself to ogle Dean. Those eyes that looked olive-green from a distance were actually a kaleidoscope of different greens, hazels, and even yellows, all swirled together. Fascinating and bewitching, Cas had always swung between what was his favourite, Dean’s eyes or Dean’s mouth. Now he knew how talented that mouth was, there was no competition.

Laying there against the fluffy white pillows, Dean watched Cas watching him, a small, sexy smirk on his face. He was wearing a short sleeved t-shirt that did nothing to hide biceps that Cas had actually seriously considered biting on several occasions. He was obviously still hard - even the blankets he’d pulled half over himself were doing nothing to hide that, and now Cas was supposed to get into bed with him and somehow not lose the control that was currently stretched so tightly that Cas was worried it would snap completely. 

Cas had put this man together, piece by piece, but every time he saw him he was always struck anew by how Dean was the most beautiful thing Cas had ever seen. Each freckle and scar, each muscle and expanse of skin, every cell, every strand of DNA - they were all exquisite. 

Dean watched Cas like he was entranced by him, and it might have been an act because he knew they were being watched, but Cas didn't _feel_ like it was. He felt sexy and wanted, and he hadn't ever felt like that in his life before. When Cas sat on the edge of the bed and Dean immediately wrapped his arm around his waist, pulling him into his arms, that didn't feel fake either. 

"Fuck, you're freezing, Cas."

"This bunker is too cold. If we do this again, we're doing it in my apartment." 

"Mmm," Dean said noncommittally, pulling Cas against his chest. "Come leech my heat." 

He grabbed the thick blankets and pulled them up, so they were both covered right up to their noses. The heat from Dean's body was almost burning hot next to Cas' chilled skin and Cas tried to hold himself as far away from Dean as he could, turning onto his side and laying his arm flat down his own side. 

Dean reached out and pulled the cord on the bedside light, plunging the room into complete darkness and Cas felt even more overwhelmed by Dean's closeness. The music drowned nothing out when they were this close, and Cas could hear every breath, feel every movement, breathe in nothing but Dean. 

“You don’t have to hold your body that far away. I’m not going to…”

“Bite,” finished Cas in a whisper, as if speaking loudly when he was like this was an unwritten transgression, like shouting in Church. "I remember, and I think we established that you _do_ in fact bite." 

“Actually, I was going to say I'm not going to do anything you don't want.”

 _Dean, I want_ everything _._

Cas turned on his side, letting his head drop and be pillowed by Dean's arm and it took everything in him not to turn his head a tiny bit more to place a kiss on the smooth skin that was so close to his lips.

 _Don’t get distracted._

"I don't know how to do this," Cas admitted, embarrassed. “I feel like I have too many limbs.”

"Come closer," Dean murmured. His arm tightened around Cas and he pulled him to him. The length of his body was stretched along Dean’s now, nothing but two thin layers of material between them. Worried that Dean would be able to feel how far from unaffected he was, Cas tried to angle his hips away. Bare legs brushed together and Cas wondered if Dean realised how close to breaking point he was? How close he was to just pinning Dean down and doing everything he’d been thinking about for so many years now, consequences be damned. Maybe this was Hell and he just hadn't realised? 

Giving himself a silent lecture, he did what he'd repeatedly been trying to do since he'd got back to the Bunker. He reached across Dean's chest, tracing his fingers over his skin, down his arm, all the way to his hand. Closing his fingers around Dean’s hand, Cas squeezed gently. Then, turning his hand palm-side up, Cas carefully traced the letter S. There was an intake of breath and it took a moment for Dean to realise that Cas wasn't just stroking his hand. Once he seemed to understand, Cas slowly and deliberately added an O R R Y. 

Dean squeezed Cas, pulling him up his body enough to drop a kiss in his hair, then he reached for Cas' palm to trace the shape of a heart. Cas smiled. It was about as close to a declaration of love as he was ever likely to get from Dean. He'd take it. 

Under the safety of darkness, painstakingly, letter by letter, Cas spelled out words onto Dean's hand, stopping to start the word over again whenever Dean tapped his shoulder to show he hadn't caught one of the letters. Finally, after what felt like hours, Dean wrapped both arms around Cas and pulled him until he was half laying on his chest. 

"I'm not letting go of you," Dean murmured into his hair. "Don't ask me to." 

Cas nuzzled into his neck, letting his legs entwine with Dean's. 

"Am I squashing you?" Cas asked. Was there an etiquette to this? Should he have Googled to see if there were rules?

"No. It's good," Dean murmured, his words starting to slur as he couldn't fight off sleep as it finally started to overcome him. "You're perfect."

Being here with Dean like this, feeling his chest rising and falling with every breath he took, it was something Cas had never in his wildest dreams imagined he would have and he was revelling in every incredible moment of it. 

"Don't leave, okay? Need you," Dean murmured. 

Fuck, sleepy Dean was the most ridiculously adorable thing Cas had ever witnessed. How was he meant to watch Dean pretending to be all tough and macho during the day, when he knew that this was what happened the moment he got sleepy? 

"Go to sleep. I promise I'll be here when you wake up." 

"Better be." 

"I like this," Cas admitted softly. 

"Mmm. Me too." He tightened his arms around Cas posessively. "Mine."

"Yours," Cas agreed. His heart would belong to this needy, possessive, beautiful man until his very last breath. 


	10. I am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some people in our fandom are being treated appallingly both in online groups and on twitter. I need you to remember that, in the stolen words of someone awesome - you're not crazy. Destiel is real. That confession scene happened and was NOT open to interpretation. Most importantly, Cas and Dean are ours to love and ship and play with to our hearts content. No one can take that away. 💙💚

***

Because there was no natural light coming into Dean's bedroom, Cas had no idea what time it was. All he knew was that around fifteen minutes earlier, Dean had woken up, stretched and then slid a hand into Cas' hair. He'd been playing with it ever since. 

"Dean?" 

"Shh. I'm sleeping." 

Cas tipped his head back to squint through the darkness at Dean's face, but it was impossible to make out any features. Dean's hand carried on caressing Cas' hair, occasionally dipping down to brush against the sensitive back of his neck, making him shiver. 

Despite the events of the night before, Cas was feeling content, warm and happy. They'd managed to turn onto their sides, facing each other with barely an inch between them. Cas' head was still pillowed on Dean's arm, which meant he was much lower in the bed, the blankets almost covering his head entirely. He was almost cocooned in warmth and comfort. He never wanted to leave. This wasn't what he got, this wasn't his life. He didn't get to lie in the arms of the man he loved. He didn't get to kiss Dean,  _ be kissed by him _ so hard his mouth had felt bruised. It couldn't be real. 

He guessed that they'd only been in bed around three hours, but he was really starting to struggle to stay awake. Now that Dean’s fingers were massaging his scalp, he was fighting to keep his eyes open at all - pleasure mixing with lethargy to make him feel like he was safe and completely at peace. With the feeling of contentment though, came a familiar fear. 

"I always get a feeling of dread when I'm this happy," he admitted quietly. 

Dean's fingers stilled. "What?" 

"Hey, don't stop," Cas wiggled his shoulders against Dean's hand, sighing contentedly when Dean started moving his fingers again.

"Because of my deal with The Empty," Cas explained. "I think I've conditioned myself to shy away from feeling anything that even comes close to true happiness, just in case it takes me." 

"It won't, will it?" Dean had stopped stroking again and instead his hands were clutching tightly to Cas' shoulders, his fingers digging in sharply, as if readying to play tug of war with The Empty. This time he wasn't going to lose.

"Human body now, remember? No need for the bruising death grip." 

Dean softened his hold, stroking away the pain with tender caresses. 

"Sorry," he murmured, speaking into Cas' hair, his hot breath on Cas' scalp creating a strange sensation that Cas had to admit wasn't unpleasant. 

"No one goes to The Empty at all now," Cas explained. "Or to Purgatory - that closed off entirely now. There's Heaven and Hell, and that's it. Jack and I decided that some of the so-called monsters that existed on Earth really didn't deserve Purgatory." 

Dean shifted in bed, his voice taking on an excited, hopeful quality that warmed Cas just to hear it. 

"Do people know that? I mean, does… no, of course he doesn't. We need to take a trip north to visit Garth. He's gonna be made up to know that he and his family aren't going to end up in that place. This is incredible, Cas."

"I'd like that. They're a nice family." 

"They are. You can have a cuddle of baby Cas. If I was ever going to have a happy ending, theirs is… Theirs is pretty good."

Cas smiled. For all his pretence at being the tough guy, he knew that what Dean craved above all else was a loving, happy, safe family. The kind he and Sam had never had a chance at when they were growing up. He deserved it, and Cas would do anything he could to give him that. 

Dean had started stroking Cas' lower back instead of his neck, fingers leaving little fiery trails, sending small shocks of pleasure down his spine. Choking down a whimper, Cas tried to concentrate on what Dean was saying _.  _

"You could have that, Dean. Kids, a loving partner, a house with windows and central heating that works."

"You really dislike this place, don't you?"

"Not at all. I just get grumpy when I'm cold, which since turning human is all the time. And wouldn't it be nice to have a window you can look out of? The sun on your face to wake you each morning?" 

"Cas, have you seen me on a morning? It's not a pretty sight. No amount of sunlight is going to make me wake up happy."

"You seem to be pretty happy right now." 

"Yeah. Well. This is nice." There was an awkward moment and Dean paused mid-stroke. "Will Kate mind that you stayed? Does she know about everything? Angels, Demons, us?"

"I wish you'd listen to me about Kate. It's not like that. She's become a friend, but I've not explained what I am… was. She has no idea that anything supernatural even exists." 

Dean relaxed, pulling Cas even closer to him, although there couldn't have been any space left between them. 

"If I was in a relationship with her, I wouldn't have kissed you." 

Dean nodded, his chin bumping Cas' head as he did. 

"Do you want to be?" Dean asked quietly. "I saw the way she looked at you, Cas. And I know that most of the beeps that have been coming from your coat pocket all day have been her." 

"How do you know that?" Cas’ words had come out as a groan as Dean found a sensitive patch of skin, just above the waistband of his boxers. He was so distracted by Dean's fingers that he was struggling to keep track of the conversation. Cas could swear that sex itself hadn’t felt as good as just having Dean’s fingers on that small patch of skin. 

"Process of elimination. You don't know many non-winged people, and I can tell when a woman is interested." 

"You're making me feel like I should be in some teenage high-school drama. When adults find each other attractive, don't they just act on it?" 

Dean's sigh was deep and purposely steadying. "You'd think, wouldn't you?" 

"Well you can stop with the insinuations - there's nothing going on." 

"Good," Dean said posessively, letting his finger slip just inside the band of material at Cas' waist. Cas shivered against him and Dean let his fingers slowly massage the very top of the swell of Cas’ buttocks. Cas choked down a groan. It felt forbidden now, like everything that happened yesterday was a decade ago, instead of a handful of hours.

Cas shifted uncomfortably, trying to move his body away from Dean's and glaring suspiciously at him when Dean pulled him even more tightly to his chest, inserting his leg more firmly between Cas' legs. His ridiculously muscular thigh was now pressing against Cas' rapidly growing erection and a mortified whimper left his throat before he could stop it. 

Angling his hips away from Dean proved impossible with Dean's arm wrapped so tightly around him and their legs tangled together. He shifted again and the feeling of his cock moving against Dean's hard thigh through his boxers made him suck in a quick lungful of air and hold it. 

After a minute Dean's voice came to him in the darkness. "Breathe, Cas."

"I'm sorry," Cas croaked, not even pretending that what was happening to him wasn't. 

"Relax." 

"That's what I'm trying to do."

"Is this new for you? Do Angels not get boners? Cos I swear that that time you were watching porn…" 

Cas was grateful for the pitch blackness of the room, because he was fairly sure this was the reddest his face had ever been. Dean’s fingers carried on caressing, stroking, occasionally dipping even lower, making the situation worse. Did Dean know he was causing this? Surely he knew? There wasn’t some ‘just friends’ explanation for how Dean’s fingers were sliding in sensual circles as he stroked, caressed and teased.

"... and then when I took you to that bar you were going to screw that girl, which would have been pretty difficult without…"

Under any other circumstances his erection would be sinking as his absolute horror at this conversation rose, but no, he was pressed into a half naked Dean Winchester who now had all his fingers inside his underwear - it would take something akin to hitting his erection with Thor's hammer to make it subside. 

"... and when that dark-haired woman was all over you in that other bar…" 

Did Dean keep a fucking log of every time Cas got hard?! 

“... not to mention the last two times I kissed you. I don’t think I imagined how hard you were when I pressed against you.”

"Dean?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Shut up." 

There was a moment of silence and Cas breathed a relieved sigh. The amount of erections he’d had in the past 24 hours, he wasn’t surprised he was a little more out of control than usual. He didn't often resort to masturbation, but if Dean carried on like this Cas was going to be taking a very long 'shower' later. 

"I'm just saying that it's a natural response to the situation. A normal bodily function. Like-" 

Cas' hand shot out and covered Dean's mouth before he could finish his sentence. He made a muffled sound in protest, but stopped trying to talk. 

"Dean, I've been around since the dawn of time. I have had erections before, in various forms including many times in this human form." He refused to add that most of those had been related to Dean in some way. 

"Mmph, mmmph?" The vibrations of Dean's muffled words tickled Cas' palm, then Dean sucked a finger a little way into his mouth and bit it softly. Cas pulled his hand away from Dean's mouth with a frustrated groan.

"What I haven't had before is one while in bed with my best friend," Cas said, his tone impatient and annoyed. "My best friend who insisted it was far more important to preserve our friendship than to give in to hedonism!" 

"Hedonism?" Dean asked, amused. 

"And what do people do with this arm?" Cas waved the arm that wasn't pinned under him against Dean's side. "Does it just go along my side, like this? Do I fold it up here? It feels wrong.”

Dean reached out in the darkness and grabbed Cas' arm, pulling it over him, letting it go when it lay comfortably over his own waist. 

"Like this," Dean said. "I can’t believe you’ve been holding your arm like that all night. Sorry, I assume I'm allowed to speak now?" 

"It depends on what you're going to say." 

"Just that I could get used to waking up with you in my bed." Cas felt the rumble of Dean's words 

"Don't get used to it. I feel like I'm cheating on my new mattress, being here. It's probably terribly lonely without me." 

"Great, now I'm jealous of your mattress," Dean muttered. "How am I supposed to sleep alone, without your ass to massage?" 

Dean’s fingers demonstrated as his entire hand palmed one cheek of Cas’ backside, pulling him up against him and making Cas’ fingers clench in the material of Dean’s t-shirt. 

_ Sadistic bastard.  _

"I can ask Sam if he'll pop in each night for a cuddle?" Cas grinned, amused despite his current mortification. 

"Do you want me to cover  _ your _ mouth?" Dean threatened. 

Cas felt his cock twitch against Dean's thigh and he swallowed a groan.  _ Fuck. _

There was silence again and Cas finally managed to start to relax, despite Dean’s fingers still gently caressing his skin.

"You're definitely The Babysitter." 

"Fuck you, Dean." 

Dean laughed. He grabbed Cas' hip, manhandling him, pushing and pulling until he was finally in a position where Dean could spoon him from behind. Then he pulled Cas to his chest, wrapping an arm around his friend's waist. As Cas sunk into his arms and got used to the feel of Dean's firm chest against his back, warm through their clothes, his eyes widened. He held his breath again as he wiggled his ass experimentally against Dean. 

"Like I said," Dean growled in his ear. "Natural response to a situation, and if you keep wiggling like that, that's not going to be the only natural response. Keep still." 

"Dean?" 

"Shut up." 

Cas grinned and pressed his backside into Dean with another purposeful wiggle, revelling in Dean's pained groan. 

"Sweet dreams, Dean." 


	11. Price of Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the purpose of this story, Cas either doesn't remember being or was never married to Daphne when he was Emanuel. The Supernatural writers seemed happy to pretend she didn't exist once Cas got his memories back, and I am too.

_ "So this is Christmas! And what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just beguuuun!" _

Dean cracked one eye open and couldn't decide what offended him most, the fact that Sam was standing in his doorway singing along to Christmas songs in the most unbelievably out of tune way, or the fact that it was still only bastard November. 

It normally took Dean a moment or two to come to his senses when he woke up in the bunker. The lack of windows sometimes made it difficult to tell night from day and his first move was usually to reach for his phone. This time, however, he was instantly aware of his surroundings. Cas had turned over in the night and had burrowed into him again, his head under his chin and his arms wrapped tightly around his waist.

"If you've finished hibernating -" Sam began. 

"It's November!" Dean hissed at Sam, not wanting him to wake Cas up on the off-chance that the exhausted Angel was actually sleeping.

"How would you know? You've been sleeping for ages! It could easily be Christmas Day by now!" Sam turned the music down by a single bar on his phone, then stood in the doorway, eyeing Dean with undisguised amusement.

"He's in a better mood this morning," came the quiet murmur against Dean’s throat. 

"A very merry Christmas! And a happy new year! Let's hope it's a good one… Without any tears." 

"Oh there'll be tears alright," Dean growled. 

"Shh. You'll wake your boyfriend." Sam admonished reprovingly with a finger waggle, his face lit up in delight. 

"He's awake!" Cas groaned from under the covers. 

"Cas isn't my boyfriend!" Dean growled. 

Sam gasped loudly and dramatically. "You hussy!" 

"Why are you in such a good mood?" Dean asked his brother, eyes narrowing suspiciously. "If I get up and you've put a Christmas tree up, I’m going to hurt you. Repeatedly." 

"And after I sullied myself cooking meat products for you!" 

Dean immediately perked up. "Meat? What kind of meat?" He eyed his brother, interested enough now to bother opening his second eye to do it. 

"The meaty kind." 

"Why are you doing nice things?" Dean sniffed the air suspiciously, trying to decipher the smells he could detect coming from the kitchen. 

"Because I'm great. I thought you might need to keep your strength up after…" Sam waggled his eyebrows at the other occupant of the bed, who was still sprawled over Dean unmoving. 

"Hilarious, Sam," Dean glared up at his brother, who was smiling back at him smugly. "Haven't you seen two platonic friends sharing a bed before?" 

Sam's eyebrows practically disappeared into his hairline and he gave Dean a look that very clearly said, 'Are you fucking kidding me?!' 

"I have absolutely seen that before," Sam nodded, solemnly. "Just not today, in this room." He was gone before the book Dean had on his bedside table bounced off the wall, centimetres from where his head had been moments earlier. 

"If it helps," came the gruff voice from very close to Dean's left ear, "when he gets old he has hair like Doc Brown's from those Back to the Future films you made me watch with you."

Dean considered for a moment, forming a mental picture and then he grinned. "Actually, that does help." 

Cas stretched, his stomach and hips pressing against Dean as he arched against his body in a way that completely emptied Dean's mind of anything to do with his pain in the backside of a brother. Cas squirming against him was a new sensation that he would very much like to explore, if he could just be sure that Cas would be into that. It was one thing getting a boner while adjusting to a new set of sensations, but Dean had no idea what was going on in that beautiful mind of his and he really didn't want to screw this up.

"Sleep well?" Dean asked, clearing his throat and trying to sound completely unaffected as puffs of Cas' warm breath tickled his neck and chin as he snuggled closer, making contented, sleepy noises.

"I have no need for sleep," Cas said with a yawn. 

"Oh yeah, you sound wide awake," Dean observed dryly, rolling his eyes. "Does that mean you've just been lying in the dark, awake this entire time?" 

"It has been pleasant," Cas said, with a small shrug. "Although my bladder is telling me that I'm going to have to move soon." 

Yeah, Cas wasn't the only one. But when Dean stood up, what they were doing would be over. They'd get dressed, go into the kitchen, explore whatever 'meat' it was that Sam had cooked for them. And without a lead-in like they had had last night l, and let's face it - they were never going to have one quite like that again, they would go back to not talking about their feelings while imbibing Scotch in the library, all while Dean pretended that his stomach didn't twist with need every time Cas's crinkled his eyes at him.

“Dean, it’s okay,” Cas said, wiggling back a little so he could look up at him. “We’re okay.”

Dean knew that Cas was trying to comfort him, thinking that he was worried about their plan, but honestly there was nothing he could do about that right now, and he had more immediate issues.

“I promise that when I leave today, I will come back,” Cas said, the hand he had on Dean’s waist stroking gently, in a way that Dean assumed Cas meant to be comforting. Instead it was driving him insane.

“You reading my mind again, Cas?” he said, clearing his throat as the words came out thick and wrong.

"I'm not even sure I can hear your prayers anymore." 

Dean felt a pang of sadness. He liked being able to pray to Cas. It let him say things he couldn't bring himself to say to his friend’s face. 

"You can always whisper them in my ear," Cas whispered hotly into Dean's own ear, sending a shudder of need through him. What would happen if Cas ever actually touched him properly, he wasn't sure. Some sort of cataclysmic, world-wide event, with his implosion at the centre of it, if what these small touches were doing to him was anything to go by. 

"The things I'd be whispering in your ear would be far too filthy to be allowed in a prayer," Dean growled, twisting the back of Cas' t-shirt in his fist, fighting for control.

"Dean, have you heard yourself when you pray?” Cas' fingers had slid under the hem of his t-shirt and were caressing the skin of his back, exploring slowly. “Your prayers are the most irreverent, the most-" 

“Alright, Cas. Say what you feel, why don’t ya?” Would kissing him again be okay? He hadn't objected before. Dean could just pull him up his body and do it. "You answer my irreverent prayers." 

"Because they're yours. I always come when you call." 

Dean grinned what he knew was his filthiest grin, although it was completely wasted on Cas, who still had his head buried in his neck. 

"Oh, really? We could test that." 

"What? As long as I've been able to hear you, I've always… Oh.  _ Oh _ ." 

Cas pulled back to look up at him and Dean was gratified to see that Cas was currently looking as wrecked by this as he was feeling. His eyes were heavy lidded and unfocused, his lips still looking kiss-swollen, despite the fact that it had been hours since Dean had kissed them. 

Dean ducked his head down and pressed his mouth to Cas'. He wasn't going to, he'd even had an argument with himself about it when he'd first woken up, rediscovered Cas was in his bed and had nearly pulled him straight up for a good morning kiss. But Cas was looking up at him with this beyond aroused look on his face and Dean so very desperately wanted to kiss him. Needed to. 

His hands on Cas' face, partly so he wouldn't be tempted to put them anywhere else, he covered Cas' body with his, revelling in the way he squirmed and shuddered underneath him as Dean pressed him into his bed and kissed him fiercely. Cas hands clawed at Dean's sides, moaning into his mouth, and fuck, he was the sexist thing Dean had ever seen. He'd never wanted anyone this much in his life. 

"Dean," Cas groaned, his voice that already made Dean think of sex every time he heard it, was glorious when he was this turned on. Deeper, throatier, harsher - it made Dean want to do filthy things to him just to hear his ridiculously guttural moans. "We have to get up. Sam cooked." 

"Screw food. I like it here."

"What happened to this being dangerous?"

"Yeah, well now you're half dressed and in my bed. Things change." And if our lives are going to go back to being fucked with by this world, I'm going to take happiness where I can get it. 

"As much as I'd like to continue with the ruination of our friendship - Sam's waiting for us with, um, meat."

Dean grinned and opened his mouth, a crass sexual innuendo about to spew forth. 

"If its meat you wa-" 

"No." 

"No?" Dean gave Cas a crestfallen look. "Urgh. Fine."

Dean threw back the blankets, utterly unashamed of the tent in his boxers, despite Cas' eyes on him. He walked over to his chest of drawers and started digging through it. 

"You're gonna need clean clothes," Dean said, throwing a t-shirt, Jeans, boxers and socks on the bed. He didn't mention the streaks of mud on the legs of Cas' discarded jeans, nor the socks that looked suspiciously like Cas had been trekking through the woods in them, but gave him a pointed look when Cas looked like he was going to argue the point. 

"Thank you," Cas said in a grudgingly grateful tone that made Dean want to laugh. 

Dean turned away to give Cas some privacy to change. He could hear the rustling of clothes, the sound of jeans being fastened, belts being threaded. Dean did the same, hurriedly fastening jeans, pulling a fresh t-shirt and shirt on, unsure if Cas had turned around to give him privacy too, or was just blatantly ogling him while he changed. Not that he'd have minded. Dean wasn't shy. 

"You know, I actually really like cuddling," Cas said thoughtfully from behind Dean. "I've not really done it before, but it makes going to bed a much more pleasant experience." 

“Never? I thought you’d, you know… done the dirty with that Reaper chick?”

“It was sex. Twice. Afterwards I showered, and shortly after that, I was stabbed. There was no cuddling. I'd have to feel safe with someone to let my guard down enough for that.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, I get ya. I mean, I sleep with a gun under my pillow and a machete under my bed - I’m not the poster boy for trust.” 

He turned around, figuring Cas must be dressed by now. It hit him almost instantly. 

_ I'm screwed.  _

Cas in Dean's own clothes was probably the sexist thing he'd ever seen, and he'd seen a great many appealing things in his lifetime. Dean knew he was a little possessive over Cas at times - he hated it when Meg, Crowley, waitresses and, well, anyone at all had flirted with his Angel. He wasn't sure what the deal with Kate was, but he disliked her for the possibility that there even was a deal to be had there. But the look of Cas in Dean's clothes, with his just fucked hair, his chin and jaw that were sporting some seriously sexy stubble and Dean's shirt clinging to a body that Dean just wanted to debauch - that was off the scale. Dean's previously flagging boner was back to being fully interested in the situation.

There was silence for a moment, then Dean tore his eyes away from Cas. "I mean if you did it twice, it must have been good?" 

"It was satisfactory." 

"Really? That good, huh?"

"Dean, it was fine. Good enough to make me let my guard down enough to end up tied to a chair and stabbed with my own Angel blade. I'm finding this an awkward topic of conversation." 

"Sorry. It's dropped." 

"You've done this before though," Cas said, sitting to roll Dean's clean socks onto his feet.

"Cuddling? Yeah, kinda," Dean shrugged. How could he tell Cas that in all the months he'd had with Lisa, he'd never once forced himself to stay awake, just so he could listen to her breathing like he'd done with Cas last night? That he'd never felt inclined to spend precious minutes just touching her hair, basking in the feeling of having her body close to his, the way he had with Cas' body. What happened to him last night was completely different from anything he'd experienced before. Dean wasn't even sure what last night was meant to be. Anyone else, they'd have been on their second or third round of sex by now, yet somehow this had felt like more. Fuck, he was getting sappy in his old age. 

"Do you ever wish you could go back to that? Is that something that would make you happy?" 

Dean blinked at Cas, feeling suddenly and quite rudely shaken out of his reverie. 

"What the fuck, Cas? No! And if you're thinking of trying to make me happy by somehow setting me back up with Lisa, think again!" 

"It was just a thought," Cas muttered. 

The horror in Dean's voice seemed to confuse Cas, although Dean truly didn't understand why. How could Cas possibly think that bringing Lisa and Ben back into his life would be a good thing? Dean had nearly got them killed repeatedly, and he hadn't so much as thought about Lisa in years. Occasionally Dean wondered where the fucking Angel’s head was at.

Dean felt quite horribly like Cas was trying to find ways to get rid of him, trying to find someone to palm him off to. Didn't he want what they were exploring? Was it all too much for him? Was Cas doing it all for Dean and couldn't wait to escape? Dean had been insistent, practically forcing him to come over and then forcing him to stay the night. 

_ Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.  _

“You were happy with them once.”

“I mean I was happy with my first ever girlfriend, Robin, but I’m not suggesting you go and drag her ass over here either."

"Do you want me to find Robin…?"

"No!"

Dean raised his eyes Heavenwards and wondered who he should pray to now for the strength not to strangle Cas.

"You want me to be happy, how about you come play pool and drink beer with me one night? Or come on a road-trip. We can hunt some monsters, maybe explore some new towns." 

“You were already doing these things with Sam and they didn’t make you happy,” Cas pointed out.

“That’s because Sam's a dick.”

“I feel so special,” Sam said from the doorway, making both men’s head’s snap up as they stared at him, one guilty and the other unrepentant. 

“Hi Sam,” Dean smiled. “We were just talking about you.”

“Good morning, Sam,” Cas said with an apologetic smile and a half wave.

“Morning Cas. Morning Dickhead. Your food is cold!”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Cas said, firmly.

“Can’t wait.”

***

Dean and Cas wandered in to sit at the polished silver kitchen counter a minute or so behind Sam. 

"You'll have to microwave it!" Sam griped as a greeting, and Dean wondered why Cas thought he needed a relationship at all, when he had all the nagging wife he’d ever need in Sam. 

"What is it?" Dean asked dubiously, lifting the lid of the bun to peer suspiciously at what was apparently a burger inside. 

"A burger. I made them from scratch! Plus veggie ones for me and Eileen." 

“He’s becoming quite the chef,” Eileen said, proudly. She beamed up at Sam and he looked at the ground, blushed and then grinned back at her. Dean was torn between being made up for Sam and wanting to vomit. Even in his longest relationships Dean had never been one for PDAs. Sex he wasn't shy about, but romance in public was just uncomfortable. No one needed to see that. 

"Alright you two, not in front of the food." Dean turned to Cas, who was unusually quiet as he ate. "How is it, Cas? Will I die if I eat this? You can be my poison tester.”

“As far as I can tell, it’s quite good.” Somehow even him lifting a burger to his lips was fucking sexy when he looked like this, all rough and exhausted, like he was Dean’s and he’d spent the night in his bed, doing all kinds of depraved things. 

“Cas, what are you wearing?” Eileen asked, obviously having the same sort of thoughts Dean was having about what Cas may have spent the night doing, although Dean hoped not quite as vivid and filthy as his thoughts had been.

“Did Dean make you dress like this?” Sam chimed in with a grin. “Are they your sex clothes?"

“No, Sam,” Cas answered dryly, which made Dean suddenly wonder if Cas didn't sometimes 'misunderstand' entirely on purpose. “I would in fact be naked for sex. Aren’t you? Do you have sex clothes?”

Dean choked on the large bite of burger he had just taken. Wondering if this was the new way he was going to die, he bent double, trying to dislodge the food from his airway, while still staring at Cas in wide-eyed amusement. 

"Sam, tell me you have sex clothes!" Dean half coughed and half laughed. "Tell us Eileen, does he wear a naughty maid's outfit on your date nights?

Sam had quickly gone from amusement to bemusement. Unfortunately it only lasted seconds before he was back to grinning at Cas with such delight that Cas was starting to look constantly suspicious. 

"You can joke about my sexy little maid's outfit as much as you like, Dean. I bet you've kept your cowboy stuff, and you'd fall over your own tongue if you saw Cas wearing any of it!" 

Confident he wasn't about to die a premature and humiliating death (again), Dean looked up from his burger to look at Cas, who had gone back to contemplating his food as he slowly tore the bread bun into pieces. Neither Angel nor human, he was in limbo and Dean’s heart went out to him. He didn't need Sam's ribbing on top of everything else. 

"Why are you so obsessed with coupling us up?" Dean growled. If Sam hadn't made him this pretty delicious burger, Dean would have opened a can of whoopass by now. 

"Hey, if the cowboy boot fits…" Sam grinned, unaware of the potential danger in the form of his brother, who was seconds away from abandoning the burger to pin his brother down until he apologised to Cas for being such a douche. 

"As much as I love being dragged into a good old Winchester spat," Cas said, "I need to go in a minute, and Dean was going to ask about your plans for Thanksgiving." 

"We were planning on doing our usual for it - nothing. Zero. Zip." Sam looked perplexed. "Why? Do you want to do something for it this year?" 

Cas shot a look at Dean. 

"Mrs Butters made me realise what we're missing out on, skipping over all these little celebrations that we never really had as kids." Dean sounded awkward and Cas smiled encouragingly at him. 

"I'll help cook," Cas offered. 

"It doesn't have to be a big thing," Dean added. "But a celebration would be nice after all the shit we've been through." 

"I like the idea of it. I just never realised  _ you _ would," said Sam. "I'll call Garth and Jodie. See if the families want to come over." 

Dean frowned at Sam. "I thought it could be just us? Keep it quiet?" 

"It's always just us. It'll be great to get the old gang back together again for something that isn't an apocalypse for once." 

Dean wandered over to the fridge and poured himself a glass of orange juice, then glancing over at Cas, got down a second glass to fill. 

"Here ya go, buddy." He handed him the glass. Their eyes met purposefully for a silent conversation that ended in Cas shrugging his shoulders helplessly. 

_ Shit.  _

His eyes now unable to disengage, Dean's gaze travelled slowly down Cas' body. He looked so completely different to the usual bundled up, repressed Angel. He looked so very human, and so very fuckable. 

“Do I have something on my face?” Cas asked, frowning.

So many dirty thoughts went through Dean's mind that he almost wished the burger  _ had _ killed him.  _ Deep breaths, Winchester. You can do this. You're not a frickin' teenager anymore.  _

"Not yet," Sam said, amusing himself so much that he had to turn away and open the fridge, shoving his head inside to try to hide the laughter. 

"You're making fun of me," Cas observed. "Do I look ridiculous in your clothes?"

"No," Dean said quickly. "You look… You look fine. I mean, good. You look… good."

"What Dean is trying to say-" Sam started, grinning at Cas. 

"I think Dean can speak for himself, don't you, Sam?" Dean interrupted his brother with a warning glare. "Isn't something burning?" 

"Nope," beamed Sam, not even trying to be helpful. 

"I don't smell anything burning," Cas said, sniffing the air. 

"Maybe your human nose needs time to adjust," Dean suggested with a glare that dared Sam to disagree. “Why don’t we finish our food somewhere else? Leave Sam to think about how soundly he sleeps and how safe he really is from any repercussions…” 

"I really do need to go, Dean. I've promised to meet Kate this afternoon." 

A stab of utterly unfounded jealousy knifed through Dean's chest. Unsure if he was spurred on by that, or just by how unbelievably fucking hot Cas was looking, Dean moved to stand closer to his friend. 

Dropping his voice low, so that the other two would hopefully stop listening in, he growled, "My clothes look almost as good on you as they do me."

Cas' wide eyes shot to Dean's, his cheeks visibly reddening at Dean's blatant flirting. 

"Thank you, Dean." His tone was wary, his eyebrows questioning. 

"You know, you really need some clothes that flatter you more. You hide under coats and baggy sweaters all the time and-"

"I've never seen someone go from straight to gay with quite such speed." Sam was watching them with undisguised fascination.

"Sam..." Eileen warned. 

Rounding on his brother, Dean spat, "I'm not fucking gay, alright? Back the Hell off, Sam." 

Sam raised his hands in surrender at the fury in his brother's face. Realising he'd overstepped the line, he ushered Eileen into the next room, leaving the other two alone. 

Dean turned back to Cas, who was watching him with an appraising look on his face, eyes narrowed. 

"I'm just saying that we could go shopping, then go get a beer, play a game of pool or something?" Thinking of reasons to see Cas when the world wasn't ending was actually more difficult than Dean had imagined. He just wanted to know when they'd see each other next. 

"That's a kind offer-" 

"I’ve got nothing on tomorrow," Dean suggested hopefully. 

"I don't think that's a good idea, Dean." Cas slid off his stool and without offering Dean so much as a quick hug or a pat on the back, he left. 

Dean dropped his head into his hands. 

_ Shit. _


	12. Wings

Dean was obsessed. He knew he was obsessed, and he drew some comfort from the fact that he could acknowledge his descent into madness. Truly unhinged people had no idea they were behaving like crazy people, so by that logic he couldn't possibly be crazy. He was acutely aware of the ridiculousness of both his behaviour _and_ his thoughts. It was made all the more ridiculous when Dean compared it to his behaviour with anyone else he'd ever fancied, where he'd always been the one to keep his emotions in check. Controlled, calm, collected, never needy - who he had become since he'd kissed Cas was barely recognisable and it needed to stop. 

"What do you think? Do you think I should go out and get laid? Get it out of my system? Who's a good boy?" Dean rubbed Miracle's belly. 

He missed Cas. It had been eight days since Dean had seen him. Eight days since he’d been able to accidentally on purpose brush their knees together under a table or even just shoot the breeze over a beer. He couldn't keep his mind focused on anything else without it wandering off to the way those beautiful, big eyes darkened like a storm was coming every single time Dean had even got close to kissing him. The way he'd let out these tiny moans when Dean had kissed his neck. The way his hips had pressed hard against Dean's, unconsciously seeking him out, trying to get closer.

And _fuck_ , the way his voice would drop so low that instead of hearing the words, they vibrated right through Dean, setting his nerves on fire.

Night times were the worst. He could still smell Cas' fading scent on his pillows, on his sheets and he refused to change them. He felt like a lovestruck teenager, except of course, he wasn't lovestruck. He was missing his best friend and he was a horny S.O.B. That much he could admit.

Dean had realised how badly he'd screwed up when he'd tried to call Cas the next day and it had gone straight to voicemail. Cas had replied half an hour later with a terse text, and Dean wasn't stupid, he knew why. But what else could he say? Messing around with guys once in a blue moon didn't make him gay, bi or anything else. People could fuck off with their labels. He liked sex was all. He was good at it, enjoyed it in all its forms. 

While half drunk, alone and in the relative safety of the privacy of his bedroom, Dean could admit that there had always been a connection between him and Cas, something that had burned white hot between them from the first moment they had met. It had only burned brighter once Dean had got to know Cas, when he'd realised that he admired him, liked him, missed him whenever he wasn't there. 

Laying in his bed, staring up at the cracked ceiling, Dean wondered if Cas had been attracted to him in the same way when he'd had all his Grace. He wanted to call and ask, but knew he wouldn't. Was love as an angel different to love as a human being? Sure, they'd exchanged some pretty heated looks, but Dean had never been sure if Cas felt it too. But then:

_Because the one thing I want… it's something I know I can't have._

That was what changed everything. Cas telling Dean he'd loved him had been incredible and moving and had brought him to fucking tears, but those other words had been undeniable. What else could he want that he didn't already have? Was he right that he couldn't have it? Because if Cas wanted an official relationship, if he wanted them to walk around Target hand in hand, if he wanted Dean to get down on one knee, that wasn't anything Dean could give him. If he wanted that, then Dean needed to tell him how off-limits it was and why. Cas deserved that much at least. 

Would he go back to not knowing how Cas felt about him if he could? No. He wouldn't. Not ever. Their friendship was messed up right now, confusing, all push and pull at the same time. But it had been that way before Cas' confession and long before they'd gotten all hot and heavy in Dean' bedroom. There had always been tension, heartbreak and Cas had run when Dean had been a thoughtless dick and pushed him away. Was any of it fixable? Was this just their routine now? Breathless kisses, scalding hot touches, then panic and terrified retreat? 

Cas was at least replying to his texts, but there was tension there. A forced lightness that didn't feel real. He was still talking to Sam normally though, and it was through Sam that Dean found out Cas was coming over for a board game night. Trying not to think too hard about it, Dean couldn't help but read into it that Cas could cope with being around him as long as he had a chaperone so that Dean didn’t jump his bones. Which was fair enough really, Dean did have previous.

It had gone quite well - Dean had made his famous Tacos. To his discomfort and thinly veiled horror at the time, his mom had once told him that the way to any man's heart was through food and sex. Dean couldn't fault her logic and he needed Cas to want to be around him again. Cas still needed food for sustenance, so Dean was going to make damn sure that the molecules Cas did taste would be damn good ones.

They'd eaten and Cas had been a little quiet, but friendly enough. He’d complimented Dean’s cooking, refused to drink any of the beer Sam had brought home especially, quietly informing them that he needed to keep his head clear. But they'd laughed and talked, and Dean had made sure to bump knees with him, to touch his shoulder as they'd talked, to hold his gaze and eye fuck like they always used to do. There had been so many nights Dean had gone to bed rock hard after he'd locked eyes with Cas half the night. Reminding Cas was no bad thing, surely? 

Being with Cas again was a mixed blessing. In one way his presence was always like a soothing balm to his soul, making him feel calm, less angry, less on edge. But at the same time it was pure torture not to be able to touch him, kiss him, and he was sure Cas felt the same way. He’d seen him sneaking glances at him, he’d heard the catches in his breath when they’d touched. He wasn’t imagining it - Cas wasn’t as unaffected as he was pretending.

They'd played Risk, then Sam had insisted on getting Monopoly out again. Cas had muttered to Dean that he needed to hide the game somewhere far, far away while Sam was sleeping. Dean was only too happy to agree, because he was damned if he was going to spend more evenings watching his brother somehow buy up every property on the board and not even pretending not to be smug about it. If he couldn’t have Cas, Sammy wasn’t getting his hotel on Boardwalk. 

Resigning himself to one more night of Monopoly Hell, Dean had brought the dog counter back to the table, but flat out refused to let Sam use it. Cas looked like he was enjoying himself, the awkwardness of the past few days seemingly forgotten. Every now and again he would look at Dean and his eyes would crinkle in that way that made Dean ache to reach out and take his hand. 

Sam cracked a joke and Eileen laughed. Dean caught Cas' eye again. Would he come back to sleep in Dean's bed tonight? Dean didn't want Cas sleeping in his old room - it was always more of a guest room anyway. Dean's room was much better - it was marginally warmer for a start. Was a bed even made up for Cas? It was pretty late and Cas would be much better just crashing with Dean.

Dean dropped his head into his hands. _Pathetic!_ He'd not felt like a teenager on a first date since he'd actually _been_ a teenager on a first date. When he looked up, Cas was looking at him with concern. 

"You okay?" he mouthed, looking up from where he'd been bending to scratch behind Miracle's ears. Dean momentarily considered rolling on the floor in front of Cas to see if he'd get the same attention. He gave him a lopsided, half smile and hoped Cas read it correctly as, 'not really. Need you.' Then he could come and snuggle up and make it all better.

"I yield," Cas said, tipping his little metal ship over onto its side. "You'll beat us in a few turns, Sam." 

"Oh great," muttered Eileen. "Sam, I'm buying you new board games for Christmas, so I don't have to keep playing this shit game. I never win!" 

"I should head to bed," Dean said, stretching and yawning in an exaggerated manner. Sam ignored him, busy bouncing, humming and counting his pile of Monopoly money like Scrooge on uppers. 

Dean stood up and gave Cas a pointed look, tipping his head towards his room. If Cas didn’t want to stay the night it was fine, but even just getting Cas alone for five minutes to really talk to him would be amazing. Dean went down the hallway to the bathroom to very quickly relieve himself and brush his teeth. He was half expecting Cas to be sitting on his bed when he had finished, but to his disappointment the room was empty. Cas' room was also empty, so Dean sat on his bed and waited. 

Should he have taken five minutes to shower? Would Cas be interested in doing anything that would need him to be daisy fresh? Probably not, and after the last week without Cas by his side, Dean was pretty sure he was okay with doing nothing more than holding him all night again if that was what Cas wanted. Anything to be close enough so that he could feel Cas' warm body next to his while he fell asleep again. He'd been craving it like some sort of newfound drug. 

Another ten minutes and it occurred to Dean that Cas could have gone for a 'before bed shower' himself. Dean had only known him to shower a handful of times before, but he was human now, right? With all the feelings, needs and sweatiness that came with that. So yeah, Cas was probably showering. It's not like he would have stayed in the library to hang out with Sam and Eileen, surely? He’d definitely noticed Dean’s none too subtle signals and he’d never ignored Dean before.

By the time Dean heard footsteps in the hallway, he was filled with self doubt. What if he'd misread everything? What if Cas truly wasn't interested in being close to him? What if their new dynamic was all utterly one sided? 

"Cas?" Dean called from where he was pretending to be relaxed in bed, propped against his pillows with a book he hadn't turned a single page of. 

"Even better!" proclaimed Sam, poking his head through the gap in the doorway, utterly oblivious to how unwelcome he was in that moment. 

"That's debatable." _You giant asshat._ Dean glowered at his brother uncharitably. 

"Eileen and I are off to bed," Sam told Dean, like he was making some important announcement that should be accompanied by fanfare. 

"Yep."

"Night then." 

"Sam?" Dean asked as casually as he could. "Has Cas gone?" 

"He went home when you went to bed," Sam said with a shrug. "He said to say goodnight." 

"Great." What the Hell was he doing to himself? He needed to get a grip.

"Is everything still okay between you guys?" 

"Isn't Eileen waiting for you to rock her world? Better haul ass, Sam." 

Sam sighed. “If this was my fault for teasing you guys, I’m really sorry, Dean.” 

Dean scrubbed his face with his hands. “You were a pain in the ass, but it was me who screwed things up. Go to Eileen. I’ve got a date with some single malt and a whole load of porn.”

Sam’s unexpected hug was awkward, but welcome. 

"Goodnight, Dean." 

“Night Sammy.”

***

He didn't have to wait long to see Cas again, but this time he wasn't foolish enough to think Cas would want anything from him. He got the distinct impression that he was only okay with seeing him when other people were around, which, not to put too fine a point on it, blew. But Dean had finally gotten a grip on his emotions. He'd given himself a good talking to over several glasses of a very expensive whisky, and he was back in control. No more needy, pathetic pining over a man who didn't want him. They were friends and Dean could accept that. 

Sam and Eileen wanted to go out for a meal to celebrate… something. Dean had actually lost track of what they wanted to celebrate this time - finding a house, having their offer accepted, their engagement, finding the perfect eggshell coloured paint for their new bathroom. Dean may have made up that last one, but give it time... 

His point was, they were happy, they wanted to celebrate and they wanted both him and Cas there for it. Which meant Cas putting up with his presence and Dean trying to pretend he wasn't feeling like crap about it all. 

It wasn't often that Dean fussed over his appearance - he just wasn't that kind of guy. People could take him as he was, like it or not. But that evening he'd hogged the bathroom for an extra-long shower, used his favourite aftershave and trimmed his beard right down to what he hoped was fairly sexy stubble. He chose a t-shirt that both clung to his chest and bared his arms, because he hadn't missed how Cas always looked a little dazed when his biceps came into view. If Cas was resisting his charms, then it was worth freezing his ass off if it made it that bit harder for Cas to stay immune to him. 

Eileen wanted to try out the Safe Harbor, and no amount of petty jealousy was enough to make Dean admit that he didn’t want to see Kate and Cas interacting with each other when his and Cas' friendship was on such rocky ground. He kept quiet and hoped that it just wouldn’t be a night that she was working there, a hope that was shattered when she met them cheerily at the door to the restaurant.

“Cas told me to expect you!” she greeted with a friendly smile. “I’ve saved the best table for you guys. It's really private - only the fish can nosy at you there."

As she seated them at their table, she stopped Dean with a squeeze of his arm.

“I’m glad you and Cas are friends again,” she said quietly. “He’s really missed you.”

“Um. Thanks. That’s good to know.”

She grinned at him, letting go of his arm to dim the light above their table. She lit a candle for them and handed them their menus, chatting with Eileen about her sparkling diamond engagement ring as she did. 

She was annoyingly likeable, and Dean had to acknowledge that she was exactly Cas’ type. Oh God, he was going to end up alone, babysitting all Cas and Kate's and Sam and Eileen's kids. He’d be grumpy Uncle Dean. He’d get pity invites at Christmas where they’d argue over who was stuck having him over that year.

When Kate left, Dean fiddled nervously with the leather bracelets on his wrist and checked the time on his watch. Cas was ten minutes late. Was he going to bail on them? He lived literally one flight if stairs away - how was he late?

A few minutes later Cas appeared next to them, looking dishevelled and painfully sexy in black jeans and a t-shirt, no Children's TV Presenter sweater in sight. Dean didn't know whether to rejoice or cry. 

"Cas!" Sam and Eileen both greeted him warmly, gesturing for him to sit down on the cushioned bench next to Dean. 

"Did you get stuck in traffic?" Dean asked, sarcastically. 

"I only live upstairs, Dean," Cas answered seriously, as he slid into his seat, making sure to leave a large space between him and Dean, which didn't go unnoticed. "I had a little accident with a sharp piece of pipe that I was trying to fix. I wrapped it in tape, but not before it did this to me." 

Cas held up a hand that was wrapped in a messily applied bandage. Blood was already oozing through it and it looked like it would fall of into Cas' glass of beer at any moment. 

"Cas! You need to get that looked at - that’s a lot of blood. You might need stitches." Eileen grimaced. "If you've got the kit handy, I can sew it up for you." 

"It's nothing serious. I'd have bandaged it better, but it's very difficult to dress a wound with only one hand."

"You got supplies upstairs?" Dean asked, straight to the point. 

"Yes. But I'm okay, Dean. It's barely bleeding at all now." 

"We'll be back in five," Dean said, downing the dregs of his drink and nudging a reluctant Cas out of the booth. "Order me another beer?" 

Cas’ apartment wasn't like Dean had imagined at all. Cas had owned nothing more than the clothes on his back for most of the time Dean had known him, so he'd never actually seen what Cas' taste was beyond garishly bright sweaters, pork scratchings and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Dean knew Cas had hideous taste in cars, an attachment to his trenchcoat (but then so did Dean), and he was very attached to his fancy new bed. 

He was expecting either complete sparseness or a room that looked like Bobo the clown lived there. What he wasn't expecting was cosiness, warmth, lamps with gentle pools of light, throws over the sofa in soft greys and blues, a little fluffy rug in the centre of the room. What Dean loved the most was the row of photos along the mantelpiece. Everyone they ever loved, anyone who had been family or friend to Cas was captured for Cas to look at every day. 

"I furnished it almost entirely from charity shops," Cas said, rooting through a kitchen cupboard for the first aid kit. "It's probably not to your taste, but I needed to make it homey."

Dean picked up a photo of Sam and Charlie and himself that Cas must have taken when they weren't looking. Charlie's head was on Dean's shoulder, her hand behind Sam's head making devil horns with her fingers as she beamed up at him. There was so much love in this photo and he was unbelievably touched that Cas loved all these people, that the people who were family to him were family to Cas too. 

"It's awesome, Cas," Dean said, choked up without really understanding why. "I can see why you like it here."

“It’s okay. It’s not ideal, and the landlord is really crappy about fixing things. Hence the finger maiming.” 

Dean had found a photo of him and Cas dressed as cowboys and was feeling the now familiar stomach twist of fondness and longing mixing inside him, desperate to come out. 

Cas gestured Dean over to the table and he mentally shook himself. They sat down opposite each other, the first aid box and a bowl of warm water between them. 

"Why haven't you healed it?" Dean asked, peeling back the sticky bandage to reveal the jagged gash down his forefinger. "Is your Grace too low now?" 

"No, but healing uses a disproportionate amount of it. A small cut is nothing." 

Dean held Cas' hand over the bowl of warm water as had brought over, and using the swabs, he gently cleaned the jagged cut, conscious of Cas watching him as he worked. 

"Sorry if this hurts. I don't think it needs stitches." 

"No, I didn't think it did. It was just hard to dress properly one handed, and I didn't want to leave you all waiting." 

Cas watched as Dean dressed his wound, gently and efficiently. “Having such sensitive nerve endings takes some getting used to," Cas admitted, pulling a face at his stinging finger. 

"Does that mean that as an Angel, you couldn't feel anything? Any sort of touch?" 

"I could feel touch, just not necessarily pleasure or pain." 

"I took you to lose your virginity - wouldn't that have been a bit pointless for you? You should have said - what were you going to do after you'd finished trying to fix her daddy issues? Play Connect Four?" 

"We can choose to 'light up' our nerve endings, if that makes sense? Angels can feel intense pleasure and sex can last for days when we use our Grace." 

Dean tried to ignore the heat that filled his cheeks as he coughed to clear his throat. 

_Days?_

“I didn't really think of Angels doing it any differently to humans. I definitely didn't pay enough if you were going to be with that girl for a long weekend!"

_Really? Days?!_

“If you’re really interested in knowing - the act itself isn't all that different. But you don’t think Angels have all this power and don’t use it when they are intimate? To keep up their stamina, to have countless orgasms, to give pleasure. Didn’t you sleep with Anna? Surely you know?”

“Anna didn’t have any Grace at the time,” Dean said. 

"Ah, of course." 

“Not that it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t countless orgasms great. I thought you'd never had sex until the hot psycho Reaper chick?"

"She was my first and only experience of sex, and while it was very good, I can imagine that it can take over everything else and that's not a good thing."

"Like that experiment where there is a rat in a cage with two levers. It can only press one lever every hour, food or a zap of electricity straight to the pleasure centre of its little rat brain. The rats all starved to death, but died real happy." 

"I can see how that could happen." 

Dean felt a stab of jealousy. "April was that good?" 

Cas shrugged. "I wasn't talking about April. What happened between you and I might not have been sex, but it was intense, and… and I'm making you uncomfortable, aren't I?" 

"I've always been more of a doer than a talker." Dean shifted awkwardly in his seat. If he kissed Cas now, it would have the added bonus of shutting him up. 

“You know, I never understood the embarrassment human beings experience when it comes to talking about sex. It’s what you were created to do. Parts of your bodies are created precisely for this, yet you insist on blushing whenever the subject is brought up.”

“Alright Jilly Cooper. I get it. I can talk about sex just fine."

Cas eye him shrewdly and Dean changed the subject. 

"I mean, if you had this sexual superpower, why weren’t you in bars every night getting laid? I sure would've been.”

Cas' finger was properly bandaged now, and Dean knew he should really let go of Cas' hand. 

“It hasn’t been high on my list of things to do over the years. There’s always been an apocalypse, an uprising, or you or Sam needed saving. I did spend several millennia leading armies - or do you imagine all I did up in Heaven was sit on a cloud with a harp?”

“Well…”

“Dean! You did think that!” Cas accused.

“I didn’t think that. Much. I mean, when I first met you, you were the most terrifying being I’d ever seen, so it was a bit difficult to imagine you peacefully sitting on a cloud when you were burning people's eyes out and threatening to send me back to Hell.”

“I did warn her. I didn't do it on purpose."

"Yeah, but you didn't come to me with a halo and fluffy white wings. You came to me all electricity, explosions and ' _I gripped you tight and raised you from perdition'_ \- I didn't imagine there would come a time when I'd cuddle you in my bed all night." 

Cas' eyes crinkled as he smiled at Dean with an unmistakably fond look on his face. Dean ran his thumb gently over Cas' knuckles. 

"You know, my wings weren't white. Or fluffy."

"What were they like?" Dean would be lying to himself if he pretended he wasn't intrigued. 

"You saw them once - have any of your memories of Heaven come back to you yet?" Cas gently extracted his hand from Dean's, got up and disappeared through a door at the back of the room. Back seconds later with something in his hand, he waited expectantly for Dean to answer the question. 

"Nothing that makes sense. Some snippets of a conversation with Sam. When he told me how Eileen proposed to him, it hit me that I already knew."

Cas nodded, then with two distinct spots of colour on his cheeks, he handed Dean the feather that was in his hand. 

"It's only a small one, but you can see the colours," Cas said quietly, solemnly and Dean wanted to pull Cas into his arms. 

Dean turned the silken feather over in his hands with all the care of a man trying to handle a baby butterfly without hurting its wings. 

"It's pretty strong - we sometimes wear them around our necks when… well, it doesn't matter when. But you can't really accidentally damage it." 

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," Dean whispered, watching the colours move over the sheen of the glossy black feather. He stroked his fingers over it, and he was hit with a flash, memory - Cas standing before him, his wings huge and outstretched, rainwater cascading down them like a waterfall in some magical fairytale. 

"I remember," Dean murmured, looking up at Cas. "I remember you, and the rain." 

Cas squeezed Dean's shoulder with his good hand. 

"We should go back down. Sam and Eileen will be waiting to order." 

Dean held the feather out to Cas, taking one last look at the mesmerising colours. 

"Keep it," Cas said, not looking at Dean as he spoke, seeming to find the new bandage on his hand suddenly fascinating. 

"Are you sure?" Dean had the feeling that this meant much more to Cas than he was saying. 

Cas nodded, and impulsively Dean stood and pulled Cas into his arms. The hug was quick and Dean was sure he could feel a tremble running through Cas' body. But then they were pulling apart, heading downstairs like everything was normal, even though Dean had this strange feeling that the world had shifted underneath him. 

***

Dinner was nice. Eileen and Sam were the happiest Dean had seen them, and half the night was spent discussing their wedding, which they'd decided was going to be a small, traditional church wedding despite Dean trying to talk them into travelling and having it on the beach. 

When Kate came to the table and asked if they'd like the dessert menus, it was obvious that Sam and Eileen wanted to go home and have sex instead of waiting for Dean to stuff his face with cake. They offered to stay, but both Cas and Dean waved them off and sent them home. 

"You don't have to stay with me," Dean said to Cas after Sam and Eileen had hugged them and left. "I'm good with my own company." 

"It's fine. It's a relief to finally not have to sit and pretend I couldn't tell that Eileen was groping Sam under the table through more than half of the second course." 

"They're awful, aren't they? Watching TV with them gets awkward so quickly. They never even notice when I leave! It'll be a relief when they move into their new place." Dean was lying - it was going to be lonely as Hell, but Cas didn't need to know that. 

There was a pause while Cas looked at the dessert menu with a forlorn look on his face. 

"Still tasting molecules?" Dean asked him, sympathetically. He could understand the pain it would cause not to be able to enjoy food anymore. 

“The more Grace that leaks out from me, the less overwhelming the flavours are,” Cas explained, “and the more hungry I become. At the moment I’m picking at food to survive, because if I don’t then my Grace will start being used to sustain this body and will diminish faster. But no, I don’t really enjoy it.”

“Living in limbo must be really confusing. I'd be tempted go to a bar and spend it all on a weekend of sex and debauchery."

"I've thought about it, but it actually uses only precise, small amounts of Grace when compared to healing. I'd be better going into a hospital and using it to heal someone if the only goal was to get rid of it." 

"When you had your weird little Angel cult, I liked that you had people stationed at the hospital healing people. Just think of all the good Angels could have done if so many of them hadn't been complete dicks." 

Cas nodded. "I agree. And they were all brought back from The Empty. Some were made human when they wouldn't follow orders, but most are just up in Heaven twiddling their thumbs due to the 'no interfering' rule. They could be doing so much good." 

Cas' eyes seemed to sparkle in the candlelight and Dean was hit for a moment by how much of a fucking cliché he was when he was falling for someone. This was so dangerous. He shouldn't want this, shouldn't be looking at Cas like this, shouldn't be obsessing over the way the shadows played over his skin and how he wished he could uncover more of Cas' skin just to see how it would look. 

Dean resisted the urge to drop his head to the table and groan out loud. This table would have been perfect for a romantic dinner for two - quiet except for some quiet background music and the hum of voices, distant enough to not be intrusive. It felt intimate, hidden away, safe from the outside world. Dean could say what he wanted and it would be private, he could drink in Cas’ shy smile, his warm eyes, and no one else would see. 

A hand touched his and he looked up into bright blue eyes that were full of concern. 

"Dean?" 

"You're so fucking beautiful, Cas." 

Cas froze and Dean couldn't believe he'd said it out loud. 

After a moment Cas took a deep breath and smiled gently. 

"This vessel can be pleasing to the eye on occasion," he murmured noncommittally. 

Dean hadn't been going to say anything else. He hadn't even meant to tell Cas what he was thinking at all. 

"Not the vessel - you. I've seen Jimmy, and I've seen Emanuel, Lucifer - all with your face. It's you who makes this face beautiful."

Cas held his gaze for a beat, then swallowed, looking down at the tablecloth. 

"Well that's very kind of you, Dean." 

Dean cleared his throat. "I'm sorry. I'm an idiot. I'd made up my mind not to do this." 

"Me too," Cas looked pointedly at where his hand was still covering Dean's on the table cloth. 

Dean smiled wryly. At least it wasn't one sided. 

"I don't think my body even counts as a vessel anymore," Cas said. "It has been rebuilt and re-made for me so many times that I think it's just… me now."

"Have you decided what you want?" Kate had appeared silently next to their table and her knowing look made Dean wonder just how much she knew. Torn between his innate need to stake his claim, and his conditioned urge to hide, Dean pulled his hand out from underneath Cas' to lift his drink to his lips. 

She took Dean's order and threw a wink at Cas that made Dean want to throw the leftover bread rolls at her. When she paused to tell Cas about her new placement as a counselor at a children’s home, Dean didn’t hear any of her words. He watched Cas light up as he talked to her, the smile on his face utterly captivating, and Dean couldn’t tear his eyes from it. He’d noticed - he’d known Cas was attractive. He’d even known he was attracted _to_ Cas, because who could deny the images that played in his mind as he touched himself in the shower or in his bed? But tonight Cas just _shone._

At first Dean had been so sure that his constant thoughts of Cas were because everything else was gone from his life. But now they were in danger again, they were in the middle of another ridiculous drama, and _still_ Cas was all he could think about. It was like the Angel was addictive. He was laughing at something Kate was saying, and the sound of it made Dean's gut clench with need. 

Not really conscious of making the decision to do it, Dean unfolded his legs, from where he’d had them tucked under his seat, and he slid one out until it bumped into Cas’. Cas ignored the touch entirely, asking Kate something and listening attentively to her anwer. Dean didn’t mind - he liked watching Cas talk. He slid his leg against Cas’, pushing his friend’s legs apart to fit his own knee in between them. This time Cas paused, mid sentence, eyeing Dean with a questioning look.

“Sorry, just stretching,” Dean said casually, in direct contrast to the much more intense look in his eyes.

“I should serve some other people,” Kate said, shooting Dean an astute look, understanding immediately what he was doing - much more so than Cas did, Dean was guessing.

“She seems to be very well suited to her job,” Cas observed, picking up an unused fork and playing with it absentmindedly. “Her other job, I mean. She's working with teenagers in care, the ones who are struggling the most. I went to pick her up last week and met a couple of them. They really need someone like her to be on their side.”

“She seems like a good person,” Dean said, blandly. Hell if he was going to go out of his way talking up Cas’ new crush. 

“She’s only got six months left, and then she'll be working with the children full time,” Cas said conversationally. 

“Good for her,” Dean nodded. "I don't know that I could do it. Do you remember what Claire was like when she was in care? I swear that would age me faster than hunting monsters does." 

"There's a job opening up at the centre after Christmas," Cas said carefully. "Nothing special, just supervision really, being there to answer questions, break up arguments. The training is on the job." 

"It sounds perfect. You gonna apply?" 

"It involves a really deep background check," Cas sighed. "Jimmy is still down as missing. I don't think I'd even get as far as the interview." 

"I'll make a few phone calls and see what I can do. No promises though. Don't get your hopes up, but it's worth seeing if we can get you a proper identity now you're here to stay." 

Cas smiled, staring off into the distance for so long that it took the arrival of Dean's huge sharing platter of desserts to bring him out if it. 

"Where'd you go?" Dean asked, picking up his fork to try the first one, the raspberry cheesecake.

Cas watched him for a minute before he answered. 

“No one has ever called me beautiful before,” Cas said finally, his hands twisting in the table cloth, making Dean worry that he was going to pull it and his desserts onto the floor. 

"To be fair, before you came down to Earth to save me, weren’t you this badass warrior Angel? I can’t see people wanting to stop you mid-battle to tell you how attractive they find you.”

“Actually, Balthazar used to wait until we were mid battle to make up poetry about my ass.”

“Why doesn't that surprise me?” Dean asked, shaking his head. “Can you remember any of it? Wait, I don’t want to know. There’s no amount of alcohol that can erase Balthazar's Ass Poetry from my mind.”

"What non-ass related topic would you like to talk about instead?" 

Dean thought for a moment. "It might still be potentially ass related, but I want to know more about Angel sex." _Because it's going to be my porn material for the next six months._

Dean tried a fork full of chocolate brownie that was sinfully moist and sticky. 

"You really need to try this," he mumbled around a mouthful of chocolate. "It's even better than the cheesecake." 

Cas shook his head. Dean had his arm on the table and he jumped when Cas reached over and grabbed his wrist, turning his arm so that it was underside up. Dean shot Cas a quizzical look.

“While Angels' senses are for the most part vastly superior,” Cas said, as Dean fought not to roll his eyes at how pompous he sounded when he said things like that, “our sense of touch is not like yours. Our nerves don’t send signals of pain or pleasure to our brains unless we fire them up with an overload of Grace first, or unless we, like Anna did, give up our Grace. The very presence of Grace in my body acts like an anesthetic - essential for fighting and working, which is what Chuck made us for.”

Dean watched, fascinated, as Cas trailed the fingers of his good hand down the inside of his forearm, letting tiny slivers of light dance from his fingertips into his skin. 

“This is how touch feels when I’m connected to Heaven,” Cas said, tracing his fingers down Dean’s arm. “Sort of numb. It’s not like this anymore - it's all buzzing impulses and constant stimulation.”

Dean took in a deep breath and tried not to think about how it must be for Cas to suddenly be able to feel all of this, all at once, with only a smattering of Grace to dampen it down. 

Cas traced a finger over his wrist and up his arm to his bicep.

Dean frowned. “It's really similar to having a local anaesthetic," he tried to describe. The sensation was strange - feeling Cas touching him, but getting no other sensation at all from the touch. 

“Now, wait.” 

Cas eyed him knowingly and the fingers that were lazily running up and down Dean’s arm started sparking again. Much stronger, thicker ribbons of light were pouring into him, making his muscles twitch and jump, like those ridiculous electric muscle stimulation pads Sam had once tried in a half assed attempt to get fit without any work a few years ago. But while those had been painful (yes, Dean had sneakily had a go), this was more like his skin was being brought to life rather than merely shocked. His arm tingled, and his nerves seemed to fizz and vibrate, although try as he might, Dean couldn’t see any physical difference in his actual arm.

When Cas traced one finger over the delicate skin of his wrist, Dean jumped so much that his knee hit the table with a bang, rattling the unused cutlery and making Cas' untouched beer spill. 

"Jesus Christ, Cas." 

One light touch and Dean’s nerve endings were on fire. It was such an intense pleasure that Dean didn’t know if he loved it or hated it. He remembered Lisa buying a load of toys on Valentines day, and that night she’d pressed the vibrator against the tip of his cock and he’d nearly shot off the bed. It was that sort of intense - incredible but borderline too much.

“It’s okay,” Cas soothed. “I know.”

Cas’ finger paused on Dean’s skin and Dean swallowed hard, trying hard not to move a single muscle.

“Cas,” Dean said, his voice low. “What are you doing?”

Cas was lifting Dean’s hand, raising it until his wrist was at Cas’ mouth. Holding his gaze, Cas pressed a chaste kiss to Dean’s oversensitive skin and Dean bit back the moan that was rising in his throat. This touch was different, still intense, but like all the little sparks of pleasure were starting at Cas' lips and spreading out all over his body, right down to his toes. Cas pressed another kiss to his wrist.

“Is this okay?” he asked, his lips moving against Dean’s skin as he spoke. 

Dean nodded slowly, not able to look away from where Cas’ mouth was on his skin. The small, not even overtly sexual act seemed obscene when it was Cas doing it to him. He was fairly sure he’d never been this turned on in his life before. He had a single moment of panic, that someone might see them, that Kate might come around the corner, but then his mind emptied. 

Satisfied that he wasn’t doing something Dean didn't want, Cas pressed another kiss to his wrist, but this one was open mouthed. His tongue snuck out and the tip of it slowly traced a hot, wet line over Dean’s skin. With a groan, Dean’s head fell forwards, his eyes closing. Cas watched him, his eyes dark as he got Dean’s senses used to this new level of pleasure, before letting the tip of his tongue dance over new skin, tracing patterns and shapes. He watched Dean as his entire body reacted and he squirmed in his seat, his breath coming in quiet gasps and pants. Dean's other hand clenched and unclenched on the table and Cas reached for it with his bandaged hand, letting Dean grip his unhurt fingers almost painfully hard. Dean clung to him, using Cas like a rock in a storm of pleasure that assaulted his senses.

Dean groaned again. His cock was rock hard and every spark of pleasure that Cas’ tongue caused was going straight there in long pulses of sensation that caused him to writhe in his seat, opening and closing his legs in a desperate attempt to get some friction going where he most needed it. If Cas didn’t stop, Dean was going to come in his pants like a teenager on a prom date. But Dean didn’t want him to stop, didn’t want Cas to ever, ever stop.

Cas’ tongue slowed and finally, with one last incredible swipe, he lifted his mouth from Dean’s damp skin. He blew softly and the sudden sensation of cold made Dean’s entire body shiver as he let out a gasp. 

Dean lifted his head slowly from where it had fallen to rest against the table when he had collapsed bonelessly, unable to hold himself up anymore. He looked up at Cas, who was watching him in a way that made Dean’s breath catch in his throat. Had Cas ever looked at him like that before? Surely he would have remembered? Fuck, he needed sex. He wasn’t interested in his food anymore, he just wanted to drag Cas back upstairs and fuck him into that expensive, luxurious bed of his. Screw being sensible. Screw protecting Cas' heart. Screw protecting his own heart. He didn't care anymore about not wanting Cas to get the wrong idea. Hell, after that, Cas could get any idea he wanted. Cas could _have_ anything he wanted, if he’d just do that again. 

“Nice show and tell, Cas,” he croaked.

Cas' smile was dark, almost feral, dominant, and made Dean want to drop to his knees and beg for more. Then as if it had never been there at all, the look broke into one of gentle humour and compassion. Dean blinked and wondered if he’d imagined it entirely, through pure wishful thinking. 

"Cas, you wanted me to be direct with you, right?" 

"Yes." 

"And you think people should just talk about sex because it's perfectly natural?" 

"Yes." 

Dean leaned forward in his seat. "So how about you and me go upstairs and break in that bed of yours?" 

Dean watched Cas through hooded eyes. His cock was so hard that it was actually painful. 

"I should have mentioned that it works a lot like an aphrodisiac," Cas said, not answering Dean's proposal. "It will fade in a few minutes, I only gave you a tiny amount."

“Every inch of my skin is freakin' singing, Cas,” Dean said, surreptitiously adjusting his jeans to try to untrap his throbbing cock.

"My demonstration may have worked a little too well."

"Oh really?" Dean muttered sarcastically. "I'm not going to be able to walk out of here." 

Dean ran his own fingers over his arm to see if it worked when he did it too. It did, but not nearly to the same level as when Cas had touched his skin.

“Do Angels not feel sexual attraction unless they decide to juice themselves up?”

“I was never interested in strangers,” Cas shrugged. “I felt sexual attraction - connections to… to people. But not any that I could act on. I'm not asexual, Dean.”

There was a pregnant pause and Dean wondered if he was allowed to interpret it as Cas telling him he’d wanted him. Because if he _had_ wanted him all this time, and they could have been having countless orgasms every single frickin’ day for years… 

“Cas…”

With timing that did nothing to endear her to Dean, Kate appeared at their table. 

"Everything okay?" she asked, eyeing Dean's still half full plate. "I can do you a doggy bag if you want to save the rest for later?"

"That would be great, thanks." 

Kate nodded, picked up the plate and shot Cas a smile. 

“She likes you.” Dean observed, hating the jealousy that coursed through him. Kate _could_ fancy Cas, could be blatant about it. It was allowed for her and it was utterly unfair. 

"I'm a likable person," Cas said flippantly. Then indicating his arm with a tip of his head - "Are you back to normal again?" 

"Not even slightly." 

“I'm sorry,” Cas said with an apologetic frown. “It was only a tiny bit of Grace, but it might take a bit longer to wear off. Until then your senses will be a bit overloaded - it tends to spread to the rest of your body before it dilutes itself.”

Dean looked down and eyed the obvious bulge in his jeans that seemed utterly unwilling to subside. _You’re telling me._

“Why doesn't this happen when you heal me?”

“I’m very precise, Dean,” Cas said, looking mildly offended. “My Grace is part of me, like your blood is to you. If you’re going to share part of yourself with someone, you only use exactly the amount you need to.”

“This is how Balthazar has orgies left right and centre, isn’t it? Because he certainly wasn't pulling on charm alone.”

“Balthazar has always had quite a way with men and women alike. He’s always been a bit of a…”

“Man whore.”

“I was going to say 'flirt'.”

“ _Tomayto, Tomahto_.”

Dean had rather ravenously started eating the rest of his dessert platter. It felt like he hadn’t eaten in days rather than minutes, and he wondered if it was a side effect of whatever mojo Cas had used. Even if it was, it was a side effect that he was absolutely fine with.

"When your Grace fades and you can eat like a human being instead of a freaking rabbit, I'm cooking you all the best food," he said, his mouth full of cheesecake. 

"I'll hold you to that," Cas said with a small smile. 

“Did that little trick of yours drain your Grace?” he asked, his eyes on Cas because he truly couldn't stop looking at him, watching him, wanting him. 

“I could do that every day for a year and it would barely make a dent,” Cas said, easily. “Maybe a week-long session with another angel…”

Dean scowled. “Stay away from Balthazar.”

“He’s not my type.”

“What is your type?”

As the words fell from his lips, Dean froze, his fork half way to his mouth. Fuck, if that wasn’t the most leading question Dean had ever asked.

“I, ah, mean…” Dean verbally flailed. 

Cas looked at him with surprising calm.

“What do you think my type is, Dean?”

Dean couldn’t tear his eyes away from Cas’. Despite his calm regard, his hands were nervously tearing at his napkin, fingers trembling slightly.

Dean swallowed. Years of hinting and flirting, years of it all being hidden, of them never quite putting the s-e-x in subtext - maybe it was time to just say it? 

"Come to bed with me, Cas." The words had left Dean's mouth before he could think about them, but once they were out there he couldn't regret them. He'd never wanted anything more than he wanted the man sat across the table from him now. 

Cas' steady gaze gave nothing away. 

"Ask me after Thanksgiving."

"That's nearly two weeks. I could have gone insane by then." 

"I think you'll survive." Cas was smiling, eyes crinkled, pearly white teeth showing. It was absolutely fucking gorgeous. 

"There's no need to look so cheery about it," he griped. "Fuck, this is hard." 

Cas grinned and quirked his eyebrow at Dean, looking pointedly towards his lap. 

"Yeah, yeah. Alright." Dean stuck his tongue out at Cas like he was five years old again. 

"It should wear off soon." 

Dean didn't know whether to hit him or kiss him. In the end he did neither, and when the restaurant closed and they were still the only people there, he reluctantly hugged Cas goodbye. 

Two weeks wasn't that long in the grand scheme of things, was it? 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say thank you for the Kudos and the kind reviews. I was so scared to get back into writing again, and your support means absolutely everything.x


	13. Feelin' Way Too Damn Good

"You could come and watch me play tomorrow? Have a drink with me after." Dean tried to keep the neediness from his voice. Cas was avoiding seeing him in person and Dean knew why, but if he didn't touch Cas soon he was going to start breaking things out of sheer frustration. Possibly starting with Sam, who was so happy and _loudly_ in love at the moment that Dean had started sleeping with his TV on to drown them out. 

"Kate is planning on going tomorrow night - it's her weekend without the children, and she did ask if I wanted to join her," Cas mused thoughtfully. 

That hadn't been what Dean had meant, but seeing him with Kate was better than not seeing him at all. Maybe he could direct her towards Danny, the band's lead guitarist. Women couldn't resist Danny, and then Kate would be busy and Cas would be all his for the night.

"I can practically hear your brain whirring - stop plotting." 

"I need to see you." He burrowed his face in his pillow and puffed out a frustrated breath of warm air into the cool, crisp pillowcase. 

There was a pause, and Dean could picture Cas's expression softening, a smile forming. 

"I miss you too." 

Dean smiled. It was something at least. 

“Are you enjoying it?” Cas asked curiously, sensibly changing the subject. “Being on stage, singing, performing? ” 

Dean felt a familiar wave of embarrassment, almost a shyness that he just couldn't shake when it came to even just thinking about getting up on stage and letting people see him when he was vulnerable. He could put forward a persona, but music got to him - it always had. The feel of it pounding through his body, the words that were designed to make people feel something raw and real. Standing up there, he was at his most open, his most transparent; undisguised for all to see. 

"It's good," he answered shortly. "Did you enjoy watching?" He hated how his stomach twisted at the question, how important Cas' answer was to him. Whatever Cas claimed, even over the phone this wasn't safe, not for him. 

"Yes," Cas answered simply. "You're very talented. I can't believe I didn't know you could sing like that." 

"I used to do it all the time - it was what I wanted to do with my life, alongside hunting. That, and fixing up old cars; true works of art, like Baby. But my dad thought music was a distraction. Gotta be honest though, it's not the biggest thing my dad will be pissed at me for when he sees me again.”

“He has no right to judge you.”

“And yet…” 

Dean knew Cas didn't like his dad and that was without Cas really knowing how truly shit things had been for him and Sam. If he had known some of the things their dad had done, Dean had a suspicion that Cas would be purposely making his way to Heaven just to punch him. Repeatedly. 

"Alright, I've got a question for ya'. How do people get chosen for Heaven? Who decides? Is it God, or do you have like a line of elves up there checking naughty and nice lists?" 

"There aren't elves in Heaven, Dean," came Cas' confused voice. "They aren’t the most accommodating of creatures - you’d certainly never find one who was willing to perform any sort of clerical work." 

Dean sat up in his surprise. "Are you serious? Elves exist? What are they like?" 

"They're like Fairies, but even more entitled and violent." 

Dean shook his head. He really shouldn't be surprised anymore. "Have you ever seen Elf, the movie?" 

"I'm really not keen on horror films." 

“It’s not a… I can’t believe you’ve not seen Elf! I feel like I’ve left your education severely lacking. It’s only a few weeks until Christmas - it’ll be on Netflix! We’ll have a Christmas film night!”

Cas sighed into the speaker. “Are you sure there isn’t another cowboy film you’d like to watch instead?”

“No. Well, yeah. But Elf first. You know, I wasn't lying when I said to Sammy that it wouldn't be a bad thing to start some traditions, especially now that they're talking about starting a family. Kids need shit like this.”

“I think that would be nice,” Cas agreed, and Dean could hear his smile in his voice. “I’ve never experienced any sort of celebration, unless victory celebrations after a battle count."

"When's your birthday?" 

"I wasn't born, Dean - I was created."

"Creationday then." 

"The concept of days of the week and calendar months is a relatively new one. I was around in the days when your ancestors had gills, Dean." 

Dean was occasionally hit with this huge sense of awe over how this ancient, incredible, _impossible_ being was his friend. Not just his friend, but he'd been willing to sacrifice his long and precious life on so many different occasions, all for Dean's short insignificant life. Dean's moment in time was nothing compared to the life Castiel had before he'd sacrificed it all for him. 

Seeming to sense the rabbit hole Dean's mind was falling down, Cas interrupted him, knowing just the right thing to say to calm him. 

"I might have had millions of years of life, Dean," Cas said, his voice soothing. "But the past few years with you and Sam have been the only years where I've felt like I was truly living."

"You can have that birthday then. September the 18th is when we met in that barn and you scared the crap out of me. It's your day now."

"I met you in Hell before that when I was piecing… Nevermind. It's a good date." 

"Although it does make you twelve years old. Which I suppose explains your movie tastes." 

"I could use the last of my Grace to jump over there and hit you." 

"I wouldn't object to seeing you," Dean admitted. "But maybe get in your car instead?"

"Last time I turned up naked, you objected." 

"You were covered in thousands of bees, Cas!" 

"I was transporting them to safety." 

"While naked?" 

"I had to coat myself in…" 

"Don't tell me. I still can't get that image out of my head."

There was an offended huff. "I didn't realise the sight of me naked was so offensive to you." 

"I couldn't actually see anything for the bees crawling all over your body!" 

"One day I'd like to live somewhere where I can have a hive," Cas sighed wistfully. 

"You can't really have that at the Bunker."

"No. Which is a pity." 

It really wasn't - Dean massively disliked bees. 

"And I want a cat," Cas said firmly. "If I don’t kill Nigel, Sam is getting me one." 

Who the fuck was Nigel? 

"Cas…" 

"I've taken your allergies into account, Dean. I was watching Friends, and they had this beautiful hairless cat!" 

Oh God, they were even more fucking terrifying than normal cats! Like raw chickens with extra legs. 

"Cas…" 

"I know it might get cold in the Bunker, but I can make it sweaters, like mine!" 

"Wait a minute, your sweaters are-"

"Are what, Dean?" his voice had an edge to it that would have had Dean physically backing away if he was actually there. 

"Um. Beautiful. They're great. I love your sweaters." 

Dean was going to end up living surrounded by bees, bald cats and an assortment of garish sweaters. His face broke into a grin that was so huge it felt like it split his face from ear to ear. He almost laughed out loud at the sudden unexplained surge of happiness that he felt. 

"Alright. You can have bees and ugly cats, but I want to live near water," Dean bargained happily. "Sea, lake, whatever - so long as I can swim in it. When I was a kid and Bobby was looking after us, he'd take us camping by this beautiful lake - crystal clear. We learned to swim there - it even got Sammy away from his books for a few hours." 

"I'm willing to agree to that." Dean could hear Cas smiling again. "They sound like very happy memories." 

"It was about the only time I got to be a kid, you know? There was no worrying about where the next meal was coming from, no worrying about protecting Sammy from demons - Bobby took care of all of that."

"In some ways I think Bobby was more of a father to you than your dad was." 

"In every way." He paused, wondering if he should ask. "Cas, why isn't my dad in Hell?" 

"Jack and I disagreed over where to put him, at first. I didn't think your dad deserved to be in your Heaven. I didn't necessarily want him in Hell, but we had set up this place especially for you and Sammy to go to when the time came, and I didn't think your dad would be the best addition."

Dean waited, not knowing how he had wanted Cas to answer. He didn't want his dad to be in Hell, although there were moments of anger where he truly felt his dad deserved to be there. But did he want him where one day he'd have to see him every day, for eternity? And if his dad was in Heaven, did it mean that everything he had done was okay? That everything he did to Dean was okay? 

"In the end it was Mary who made the decision for us. She wanted to be with him, you would have wanted her in your Heaven, so he's there too. I'm still unsure that it's the best thing to be honest. Jack seemed to think you needed him, and he did like to use that all seeing, all knowing thing against me."

"Yeah, makes you think, doesn't it." 

There was a silence and Dean rubbed his eyes. He was tired, but he didn't want to sleep. 

"If the wrong decision was made, I still know Angels," Cas said. "They'll always be my brothers and sisters, even if they're forbidden from talking with me. We can sort it out, it can be changed."

"It's alright, Cas," Dean said finally. "I've got to face my dad again someday, right?" 

"Not if you don't want to. I might not have known you as a child, Dean, but I know you now and I will protect you from anything that hurts you - _anyone_." 

Dean's heart seemed to skip a beat inside his chest. All his life he'd been the protector, keeping Sammy safe, saving other people. Other than Sam, he'd never had someone in his life who wanted to protect him at all costs like Cas did. Cas acted like Dean was something precious, not the screw-up he knew he really was. 

"Thanks man," he said. But you can stand down - I'm a big boy now."

"I know." 

"Hang on, I’m going to put music on.” Dean climbed out of bed, wincing as the cold air instantly worked to chill his skin. The bunker really did need some central heating putting in. A soft rock radio station started playing and Dean fiddled with the sound until it drowned out the sound of Sam’s TV. He got back into bed with a contented sigh, pulling the switch of his lamp and plunging the room into darkness. Like this, in the dark with none of his senses able to tell him he was delusional, Dean could convince himself that he wasn’t on the phone to Cas at all, that he was there with him instead, in his bed, close enough for that gruff voice of his to be right in his ear.

"You know," Cas murmured, "living next to water would be lovely, but you'd have to teach me how to swim."

"You can't swim?" 

"I never needed to be able to."

"When it gets warm again, we'll drive out, find a lake and I'll teach you." 

"As long as it won't be like that scene in that dancing film you made me watch." 

"You loved that film! Swayze rocks! Even if you wouldn't do any of the dances with me."

"You were drunk. You should be grateful that I refused." 

"Stifling my creativity," Dean muttered in mock discontent. 

"Nobody puts Dean in a corner!" came the frankly terrifying impression. Dean didn't know whether to be turned on, or laugh hysterically. He went with both, still gasping for breath minutes later. Fuck, Cas made him happy. Stupid, but happy. 

"I can't believe-"

Dean's door was thrown open and in the doorway was Sam in nothing but a pair of boxers, brandishing a demon blade in one hand and a shoe in the other. Dean stared at his brother, blinking at the sudden bright light. 

"I heard noises… Wait, are you laughing or crying?" 

"Just a sec, Cas," Dean said, turning to Sam. "Were you coming in here to kill monsters or to save me from a spider, Sammy?" 

"Uh, the shoe was just… there. Are you okay? I couldn't tell what the hell was going on." 

"I'm just peachy, Sam! Until you came bursting in here like Supernanny on crack." 

Despite the time, despite the ridiculousness of his brother bursting in to save him brandishing a freakin' shoe, Dean grinned at him. Even Sam's insanity was amusing him tonight. 

"It's really creepy hearing laughing from your room when you're in here alone!" 

"I'm not alone, am I? I'm talking to Cas." 

Sam sighed resignedly, then, "Hi Cas."

"Hello Sam," came Cas' tiny voice from the small speaker. Dean smiled at it. 

"God, look at you," Sam said, rolling his eyes at his brother. 

"If you're done playing the hero, I was just about to go to sleep." 

"Yeah, you sounded like it." 

When Sam had left, Dean pressed his ear to the phone again. 

"You got me into trouble." 

"You got yourself into trouble, as usual,” Cas said, amused. “If you hadn’t cruelly laughed at my excellent impression…”

Dean sank back into his pillows and pulled the cover up higher, until it was almost covering his head entirely. It felt somehow more intimate that way.

“I should let you sleep,” Cas said, softly. “I’m keeping you up and aren’t you going with Sam and Eileen to have another look at what's needed for the house?”

“They’re looking at all the boring stuff,” Dean complained. “Like insulation and where plug sockets are. You can bet they won't be doing interesting things, like checking to see if there’s room for a beehive or if there's a kitty door for a really scary looking cat that will terrify all the neighbourhood children.”

“I’m going to need a skylight too. I want to be able to lie in bed and look up at the stars.”

"You don't want much, do you? Has anyone ever told you that you’re a really high maintenance human being? As an Angel, you needed nothing. But now it’s all skylights, bees, cats and me not kissing you.”

“Nigel doesn’t mind. He likes me exactly the way I am,” Cas said, smugly.

“Cas?”

“Yes?”

“Who the ever-loving _fuck_ is Nigel?!”

There was an undignified snort of laughter and a tapping sound.

“Wait, I’m going to send you a photo of him.”

“Cas, I don’t need to see a photo of him. And I mean, who is called Nigel these days anyway? What sort of name is that? What is he? A banker? An insurance salesman? Where do you even _meet_ a Nigel?”

His phone vibrated and flashed. 

“Sam introduced us, actually. I’ve become quite fond of him.”

Dean stared at the selfie of a beaming Cas posing with some deformed spiky palm tree in a pot. It looked half dead, wilting and missing half its leaves. Dean began to fear for the welfare of Cas' future ugly chicken cat. 

“Yeah, he’s...”

“...Your rival for my affections.”

“I see that. I don’t know how you’ll choose between us.”

"I think I might be over-watering him." 

There was a pause and Dean sighed. God, he wanted to see him. 

“You know I’ve got barely any photos of you? I think the last ones I took were when you were dressed all Calamity Jane.”

“Well now you’ve got a lovely one of Nigel and I to add to your ever growing collection.”

He listened to the sound of Cas changing position and he tried to picture him. What was Cas wearing to bed? Was he actually naked? Was it really all that wrong if he asked? 

"Cas, are you naked?" They could switch to a video call… 

"I don't think I should answer that question when you're in this mood." 

_Spoilsport._

"Yes then." 

"Being human has its positive aspects," Cas told Dean, skirting over it. "There are lots of simple pleasures that I never really took time to experience last time I was human. Soft sheets against bare skin being one of them.”

Dean cleared his throat. “I mean, you did experience some of the best ones, but we probably shouldn’t go there after that Reaper kebabed you.”

There was an awkward silence and Dean pictured him tied to that chair, the blade in his belly. His first experience of sex hadn't gone well. Had that been enough to put him off? It would certainly have made _him_ think twice. Probably. 

"To be fair, it was a pleasurable experience. Aside from the brutal torture."

"I don't know, some people get off on that," Dean quipped, not expecting to be taken seriously or to get any kind of followup question. 

"Do you?" 

Dean raised his eyebrows in the darkness of his bedroom. 

"Being on the receiving end of it, or…?" 

"Either. Both?" 

Dean's bubble of happiness seemed to pop in his chest. Normally he'd just brush it off, not answer. But this was Cas. They had the difficult conversations. 

"I've had my submissive moments. I mean, years ago if there was someone who would hold me down and do whatever they wanted with me - I was all for that. Bondage, toys, dressing up, anything really - but I've got more trust issues now than I had back then. I don't like being vulnerable and I don't have a whole lot of good memories of being tied up."

"Yeah, I get that," Cas agreed. "The one experience I had of sex didn't exactly leave me rushing to do it again, and I've never had a pleasant experience of being restrained." 

"Hell really fucked me up," Dean admitted. "Not that I was a fan of torture before, but I wasn't adverse to some tying up, a little spanking, some… playing. You haven't lived until you've had someone on their knees, begging-" 

_Fuck, this shouldn't be turning him on._

"I'd have my moods where I loved just making someone squirm. But now it's like, if I let myself - what if I can't stop? What if I can't control myself? What if I get carried away and actually hurt someone, or worse? Fuck. Why am I even talking about this?"

"You were forced to do the things you did, Dean. Your sex life is separate to that, and enjoying sexual kinks don't make you a bad person, no matter what happened in your past." 

"No offence Cas, but how would you know? You're not exactly drawing on a wealth of experience here." 

"I know you, Dean. More importantly, I trust you. I would be completely confident putting you entirely in charge, giving you complete control of my body, submitting to your will. I know you would never push me fur-" 

"Fuck, Cas. Stop. Stop talking." 

Dean wasn't just hard, he was aching. He reached further under the covers and pushed past the waistband of his boxers, wrapping his hand around himself.

"You can't just say shit like that."

He needed to hang up. Talking to Cas always had him frustrated, and then the images Cas had just put in his head - _fucking Hell_. He knew that if he wanted, he could come in just a few strokes. Then he would drink until he passed out and could forget every moment of the mind fuck that was the last few weeks of his life. 

"Only sexually, obviously," Cas clarified, as if Dean wasn't having a minor panic attack. "I'd never put you in charge of my food choices, or my…" 

"Cas, I've got to go." 

"You're really not keen on letting me finish my sentences today, are you?" Cas paused, sighing. "You're 'freaking out' aren't you?" 

Dean could almost hear him doing the finger thing. But even that didn't calm him down. 

"I'm not freaking out," he ground out. 

"Then what has changed, because you were fine until we started talking about sex, and then you… _oh_." 

"Yes, fine. Life has been more than a little frustrating and now I'm hard as a fucking rock, and I'd like to take care of that before drinking myself into oblivion."

"Dean?" 

"What, Cas?" 

"Why are you angry? Being aroused is a good thing, isn't it?" 

"It sure is. Do you know what isn't? Having my hand in my pants while talking to my best friend on the phone. Whatever our _deal_ is, it's not you having to listen to that. So yeah, hanging up now."

"You don't have to hang up." His voice was calm, without a hint of hesitancy. As angry with himself as Dean was, he couldn't quite bring himself to hurt Cas by snapping at or hanging up on him just so he could escape his own embarrassment. 

"I don't think this is a good idea." His head didn't, but his hand was already moving slowly up and down the length of his cock, not wanting to give in to frustration and rush it, but not wanting to resist it any longer. Having Cas on the other end of the line was doing things to him that made his entire body tingle. 

"I've never had anything good happen to me when I've been tied up," Cas admitted, "and it would be nice to replace those memories with something pleasurable. I think I would like to try that with you."

Dean was fairly sure that if he held his breath any longer, he was going to pass out. 

"I'm not sure how you'd want me tied. A bed would seem most convenient, but then if you just tied my arms behind my back, you could have me on my knees for you." 

"Shit, Cas. I want… I want to see that." 

How Cas had somehow learned to verbally top from the bottom, Dean wasn't quite sure, but he wasn't complaining. His thumb was already spreading the leaking precum over the end of his cock, making his breath quicken so that surely Cas would be able to hear. 

"Do you think you could make me beg, Dean?" 

"Fuck, yes." Dean had to stop, to still his hand or he'd be done and this would be over. He pulled his hand from his boxers and pressed it flat to the bed beside him instead, breathing fast. 

The laugh that came down the phone was sinful, and not the slightest bit submissive. 

"Are you going to be one of these people who thinks they're in charge, even when they're naked, bound and gagged?" Dean asked breathlessly. 

"I have absolutely no idea. But wouldn't you like to help me find out?" 

"More than I think I've ever wanted anything in my life," Dean moaned. God, he wished Cas was here.

Cas' breathing was unsteady, Dean could hear it down the phone. Was he touching himself? The idea turned Dean on so much that he pushed his boxers down his legs, kicking them off and letting his cock spring free. 

"Did you know what you were doing to me that day?" Cas asked, his voice low. "When you made me promise not to leave you? When you pulled my head back by my hair like that? Did you know how it made me feel to be on my knees in front of you like that? Could you tell how hard I was?" 

"About as hard as I was. Should've done something about it then." 

Dean's heart was beating fast, his pulse pounding in his ears, somehow drowning out everything but the little gasps and pants Cas was making through the tiny speaker of his phone. Cas had stopped talking now, obviously as close as Dean was, his brain shorting out too. 

"Wish I could see you," Dean murmured so quietly it was almost a whisper. He was holding on, edging himself, not wanting it to end, wanting to be completely present when Cas came. 

"I need you. I need…" Cas was babbling, whimpering. 

Dean groaned. "I know. Fuck, Cas. Me too. Come for me - I want to hear you." 

For a long moment they listened to each other's harsh breathing, Dean squeezing his eyes closed, pretending the hand wrapped around him wasn't his. 

The low guttural moan that came to Dean's ears was by far the hottest thing Dean had heard in his life and Dean was spilling over his hand, his head thrown back, his teeth clenched to try to silence the shout that he felt bubbling to the surface. 

_"Dean!"_

_Shit._ Hearing his name choked out as Cas came seemed to lift his already intense orgasm until it was crashing through all of him, filling him right to his toes. His muscles clenched so hard that it hurt as his body bent, his back lifting off the bed. Pleasure mixed with discomfort in such a mind-blowing combination that afterwards Dean was surprised he didn't scream loudly enough for his brother to come running in waving his other shoe. 

"Christ. Imagine what that would have been like if you were actually here." 

The response was a satisfied, lazy, "Mmmm," that sounded so sexy to Dean's ears that he felt a new stab of pleasure go through him just at the sound of it. 

The silence afterwards wasn't awkward, even though Dean felt like it should be. It was comforting and safe, and he wanted to fall asleep in Cas' arms, but this was as close as he could get. 

"This isn't going to be weird, okay?" Dean didn't think he could stand it if Cas went cold on him now. 

"Okay," Cas agreed, his voice soft, sleepy and affectionate in a way that Dean had never heard before, and it made his heart ache to hear it. "You should sleep." 

"Don't hang up," Dean murmured, his words slurring with tiredness. 

"I can stay until you're asleep." 

"Talk to me?" 

"Did you know that bees communicate through dance? They call it the Waggle Dance and they use it to direct their hive-mates to food sources, and…" 

Dean smiled and less than a minute later he fell asleep smiling, his phone cradled against his cheek. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nearly Thanksgiving, where lots will be explained.xx


	14. Sound of Madness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter has mentions of potentially triggering homophobia and past violence/abuse. If it helps at all, John Winchester will get what's coming to him. 

Dean couldn't sleep any more. Well he could, but when he did he dreamed. Not normal dreams - _nightmares_. There's no way to predict when they would come, no link between what food he ate, or what he watched before bed - they just haunted him whatever he did. 

He was screwing some woman in the back of Baby and half way through he opened his eyes and she was actually a corpse, her skin grey and cold. Dream Dean was scrabbling away frantically as she stumbled after him screaming at him, demanding to know why everything he touches turns to ashes. 

He came home and found Miracle brutally murdered, blood staining his beautiful sand-coloured fur. Eileen was there sobbing, blaming him because his selfishness caused this and the dog had no chance with him around. 

Then there was Cas - Cas dead on a hunt, killed by vampires, by werewolves, by his own hand because the Mark never really faded and he was still a Demon. After one of those dreams, Dean finally broke down and cried, so exhausted that he just couldn't cope anymore. 

That was the day Dean had finally given in and gone on a hunt. He knew hunting alone wasn't ideal, but he'd been trying to distract himself, idly flicking through news stories and this one was close by, so close that if he snuck out when Sam and Eileen were asleep, he could be back before anyone even noticed he was missing. 

He needed this, and if Sam begrudged him it, well, screw him. Screw Sam and his perfect life and his awesome soon-to-be wife. They had no freakin' idea what it was like to be in his head all the time with no escape. They had no idea what it was like to want what they had, but to know he would never be able to have it. 

Briefly Dean had contemplated asking Cas to come with him. Fine, they were being watched, but who would care if they were on a hunt together? It would be a way to still be around Cas and let off some steam at the same time. 

In the end, it was Cas' shiny new status as a human being that stopped Dean from going through with pressing the little green 'call' button and inviting him on a road trip. _'Baby in a Trench Coat'_ had been a bit of an unfounded nickname for him - human Cas was a decent enough fighter. A master strategist, and he had the moves and the reflexes besides, but without the inhuman strength he was half as effective as he used to be. Most importantly, whether he was human or angel Cas didn't seem to be capable of _not_ throwing himself bodily in front of Dean no matter the consequences. In the end that was why Dean didn't tell Cas what he was doing either. He didn't need to be worrying about Cas' safety while he fought. He didn't need his nightmares to come true. 

The single shapeshifter Dean had gone after had turned out to be not one but three, and he'd very nearly got his head hacked off with a meat cleaver for his troubles. But then, it wasn't the first time. No need to mention it to Sammy and get him nagging at him again. The cuts and bruises on his chest and hip were enough to remind him that he'd been a little reckless, he didn't need his brother joining in with reminders too. It was going to take him a while to heal up - he wasn't as young as he used to be and he couldn't just shrug off injuries like he once could. 

It had taken a lot longer to sort than Dean had predicted, so when Dean limped tiredly into the Bunker and straight into a hot shower, Sam had hammered on the bathroom door, demanding answers. 

"I was out getting laid, Sammy. Fit blonde at the bar. Do you want a blow by blow? I can draw a picture, if you like. Gonna need an extra-big crayon if you want me to draw my dick for ya!" 

Sam hadn't brought it up again, but Dean suspected he'd put two and two together about the hunt, because that evening Sam had glared at him so much that when Dean had finally dragged his aching body to bed later that night, it had been a relief to get away from the judgemental son of a bitch. 

The snappy, "Goodnight," from Sam followed by Eileen's, ' _Sorry, you're on your own with this one'_ grimace and shrug combo had left Dean feeling both annoyed and guilty. When he went to bed he was decidedly fucked off. He was a hunter. Hunting was what he did. They were as well asking him to stop eating pie and driving Baby as they were trying to stop him hunting. It was his entire identity - what was he without it? 

After taking his mood out on his pillow with a few well placed punches, he figured he may as well take it out on himself instead, and started searching for porn. This time there was no pretence that he wasn't fantasising about him and Cas- he went straight for the gay porn.

An hour later, his cock half hard in his hand, he felt like he'd scrolled through all the porn that the Internet held. Nothing had jumped out at him and piqued his interest, and he'd looked at some pretty kinky things. The level of taboo alone should have got him close but he was left decidedly disinterested. Maybe he'd finally done it? Maybe he'd finally finished all the porn? Was there some sort of award? A certificate maybe? A gold-plated tissue box? 

His entire body felt on edge and jittery, like ants were crawling inside him. He just couldn't shake the restless need to _do_ something. This was why he needed to hunt _with_ someone, so he could burn all this off with alcohol, flirting and pool. Maybe he _should_ actually start bringing women home again. All he knew was that alone he became an emotional, jittery, wound up wreck with a mind that just wouldn't shut up. 

Next option - drown it with alcohol. 

Hours passed as Dean attempted to drink himself into a stupor. Despite knocking back more than most men could manage without collapsing in a heap, he still couldn't sit still. He couldn't stop thinking, feeling, worrying, playing horrific scenarios out in his head. Cas had once called it catastrophizing and had tried to talk to him about ways to deal with it. Dean had accused him of trying to give him counselling by proxy. Cas hadn't tried quite as blatantly again. 

Having run out of more twisted, fatalistic thoughts, Dean moved on to the smaller, but still fucking terrifying ones. 

What if, when all their friends and family gathered for Thanksgiving, Cas did something to give them away? What if he tried to hold his hand or outright kissed him? People already talked about how they looked at each other, and that was before they'd kissed, had phone sex, had become so attached to each other. 

Dean could admit they were attached, or at least _he_ was attached to Cas. Who knew how Cas really felt these days? All he knew was that he craved him like someone had coated the Angel in cocaine. He'd tried to stop it and couldn't - It was fucking terrifying, like driving a car with no brakes. He wasn't sure he would survive if he were to throw himself free of the vehicle. Better to stay in the car and keep on driving until its inevitable fatal collision.

_You're such a maudlin dick when you're hammered._

He should explain to Cas before there were people here. He had to tell Cas what the boundaries were, before it blew up in his face. But how did you even broach that? Did Cas even understand this was a secret? He hadn't said. They hadn't talked about anything, really. They needed to talk. 

He was exhausted, just over the edge of too drunk and he was running on fumes, but he was wired and he wanted to see Cas, so he messaged him without even consciously making the decision to do it. His uncoordinated fingers found Cas' name and tapped away at the letters before the small shred of sense he had left could stop him. 

**_Dean: Cm ovr. V important_**

Cas took a few moments to answer and Dean waited impatiently, his knees jiggling, hands clasped around a glass of whisky, warming the fiery liquid through the glass with his palms. 

_C'mon little nerdy Angel-mine. I need you._

**Cas: Is everything okay?**

Dean smiled at his phone and pressed the call button. 

"What's wrong?" Cas' voice had an edge of urgency about it that would have made Dean feel guilty if he wasn't fairly drunk. As it was he just found it adorable that Cas cared enough to worry. 

"Do you like me, Cas?" 

"Is this why you called me?" came the incredulous tone. "Do you know what time it is?" 

Cas didn't _sound_ like an Angel who was out of his mind with love for him. 

"I remember a time when you liked to hear from me. Your voice would be warm and welcoming. You'd ask how I was…" 

"How are you, Dean?" Cas' voice was rough with tiredness, annoyance and a hint of something else that Dean was too drunk to pick out properly. 

"That's not warm and welcoming, _Huggy Bear_. Try again." 

"Oh Dean, how I missed you," Cas declared flatly. "How have I managed to live without hearing the dulcet tones of your voice over the last… two days is it? How have I coped?" 

He was such a grumpy fucker sometimes. 

"Better. Now you can tell me what you've been up to while you've been ignoring my existence, not bothering to call."

"Just let me wipe away my tears of relief and joy first."

"Asshat," Dean grumbled affectionately. 

"Assbutt," Cas corrected. 

"I miss you, man."

"You're drunk," Cas observed, as if that explained everything. 

"Do you like me?" Dean asked again, frowning as Cas' sigh. 

"You know I do," came the wary response.

"No, I mean like, like. Want to have my babies, sort of like?"

_Our babies would have such fucking stunning blue eyes._

"Just how much have you had to drink?"

"Not enough." Dean took another mouthful. "So out of a hundred, how much do you like me?" 

"Right now? A three," Cas delivered dryly. "What's this sudden bout of insecurity about? 

"Ouch. A three? You really know how to wound a guy." 

"It goes down a little every time you call me after midnight." 

"You don't sleep! What am I interrupting, your peaceful counting of the cracks in the ceiling?" 

"You've got people arriving in-" there was a rustling and the sound of Cas rattling around in a drawer for his watch -"six hours. And _I'm_ one of them." 

"You never care if I'm grumpy and tired. You're the only one who doesn't mind me when I'm like that."

"I'm used to you. But I need you to be on form later, remember? Stop drinking. In fact, do you have a glass of water?" 

"No." Dean pulled a face that he wished Cas could see. 

"Go to the sink and fill your glass with some."

"You're so bossy," Dean muttered, getting up anyway and gingerly padding barefoot over to the sink with his half full glass of whisky. He eyed the expensive amber liquid and then downed it all before rinsing out and filling the glass with water. The alcohol burned on the way down, momentarily distracting him from the ache of his ribs and the stinging of a particularly nasty cut near his hip. He was too fucking old for this shit. All of it. 

"Do you know that every single time anyone says my name now, all I can hear is you calling it out as you come? I'm getting a semi every time anyone talks to me. I'm fucking wrecked, Cas. You've barely touched me and I'm destroyed."

"I'm strangely okay with that," Cas' sinfully deep voice came from the speaker of the phone Dean had left on his bedside.

"You don't think that's fucked up? You don't worry that I've gone from, _'Hey that Cas is a cool guy. I like hanging out with him!'_ to _'Hey, that Cas is a cool guy. I can't fucking come unless I'm thinking about him!'_ "

"Dean-"

"Saying my name doesn't _help_ , Cas!" 

"You're making things needlessly complicated. It's what you humans - _us humans_ do." 

"Wings or not you'll always be a damn Angel. _My_ damn Angel." 

"You're panicking," Cas said, and Dean could practically picture his face scrunching up, his forehead wrinkling in thought as he tried to work out what was wrong with his friend. His stupid, drunk friend who didn't know how to cope with wanting to screw his best friend over every piece of furniture in the Bunker. 

"Do you think I'll go to Hell this time?" Dean asked, leaning his forehead on the cool mirror above his sink. The air was cold, but the whisky had warmed him from the inside out. 

"There's no way you're going to Hell. I've made you a house in Heaven, with a Deancave and your own private beach. That's not going to waste."

"Things have changed though, haven't they?" 

"Not in that way. _Never_ in that way." He sounded firm and reassuring, but Dean wasn't feeling any better. 

"What if I _asked_ to go to Hell?" He'd be the first person in the history of the Universe to ask for a transfer when he got to Heaven. 

"Okay, let's just say that there is the absolutely miniscule chance that you might go to Hell - who is it that runs the place? You'd just spend Eternity hanging out with Rowena." Cas couldn't hold back the amusement in his voice. "And Crowley." 

"Screw you, Cas."

"To be fair, you did get on well with Crowley at times. Just not in quite the way he wanted you to get on." 

There was a silence. 

"Dean?" 

Dean winced at the suspicion in Cas' voice.

"Dean!" 

And _there_ was the disapproval. 

"There was never anything between me and Crowley. But there were a few threesomes. Foursomes. Fivesomes."

"Fivesomes? At what number does it just become an outright orgy?" 

Dean winced. Who would have thought that after all he'd had to drink, he'd be too sober for this conversation? 

"I don't know. When there's a sign on the door? Anyway, we never crossed swords."

"Lovely. Well then, you'll have plenty to do in Hell if you end up there, which you won't. What's all this about, Dean?" 

"I don't want to face my dad again, Cas." Dean hadn't meant to admit that, hadn't meant to even acknowledge that delightful fact to himself. "But I don't want you to do anything to get him removed from Heaven. That's not… not what I want. I'm not putting my own dad in Hell." 

"Oh Dean, I'm sorry. I should have fought harder. It was my responsibility and I knew it was a terrible idea." 

"I've always tried to be what he wanted, but I've fucked up, Cas. And I'm going to get to Heaven and he's gonna know. And I'll spend Eternity up there with him, being the Dean Winchester I was when we hunted together. And that's not me anymore."

"I can fix this," Cas vowed. "I will sort it and we can talk about how, but not now, okay?"

"I told you, I don't want you to fix this. It's just that I need you to understand that this thing between us, it's just physical. Just sex."

"We haven't _had_ sex." 

Dean took a deep breath. "No, but I figured that was where we were heading." 

The silence on the other end of the line was telling. Cas didn't deny it, and Dean felt his stomach twist with want at the idea that Cas wanted him too. 

"I need you to understand before we get to that point, because it's not fair on you if we do this and you think-" 

"Dean, we can't talk about this," Cas interrupted firmly. 

"I don't give a flying fuck who can hear me." Dean snapped more than loudly enough to wake Sam. He swiped off the cup on his sink that still held both his and Cas' toothbrushes. Dean had left Cas' in the glass with his own, yellow sitting next to his orange, a brightly coloured clue to anyone who walked into his bedroom, but he didn't care. He watched it roll on the floor on its side and he wished there was something in his room to punch. 

"Dean! That's enough." 

"Is it? Is it enough? Will this be enough for you? Enough for the rest of your human life? The _only_ life you get to have now!" 

"We should go to bed now and talk when you're sober and aware of what you're saying _out loud_." Cas sounded like he was at the end of his tether, but Dean was too. He'd been at the end of his tether for _years._

"I've never been in love," Dean declared. "Did you know that? I don't think I _can_ fall in love. I was with Lisa for _so_ long and I thought I might have loved her, as much as I could love someone. Every day I faked the rest of it, just to have a family. But this is you, Cas. _You_. I can't lie to you. This can't be anything more than sex and friendship. Can you… Can you understand that? It's not anything you did… it's not you."

"Dean, if you're going to do an, _'it's not you it's me'_ speech then I'm going to hang up. I really don't need to listen to that." 

Fuck. Cas was pissed with him. That hadn't been the point of this at all. 

"Cas, no. Don't go." Dean panicked, turning away from the mirror, his agitation manifesting in the repeated dragging of his fingers through his hair. "I just want to, I don't know… manage your expectations." 

_Dammit, he sounded like such a dick._

"I have no expectations, Dean. When I said what I did-" 

"You can't even say it, can you? Do you regret it that much?" 

_This_ silence Dean liked far less. 

"Shit, Cas," Dean growled, feeling it like a physical blow. 

_Fuck. Now that hurt. Really hurt. He hadn't had enough to drink for this._

"I truly didn't think I'd be coming back here, Dean. It was meant to be the last thing I ever said to you. You're saying all this, giving me warnings like I don't already know that you wouldn't want to be with me. I know you don't!" 

"Not just you. Anyone." Dean needed Cas to know that it wasn't _him_. He was incredible. With his sex hair and his eyes that shouldn't be allowed to be that blue, and those hip bones that he'd only just got to run his fingers over. What if Cas said no to just sex and Dean never got to explore those little dents and dips with his tongue? 

"So you can't be with me, because you respect me too much to lie, but if a nice woman came along you'd fake it to have a family?" 

"No. Fuck, no. You're not - I don't want to find a 'nice woman' either." Dean felt like this had all gone completely out of his control and he wasn't sure how. "Everyone I love ends up dead, Cas! So I can't love anyone!" 

Cas' sigh was long-suffering. "I can't say I know what's going on with us, Dean, but I can say that I wasn't expecting it, I'm not expecting it even now. Every time I see you I expect it, _this_ to be gone again. So believe me when I tell you that I'm not reading anything long term into anything to do with you." 

There was the sound of Cas swallowing and a cup being put down on a counter or table. Cas had evidently become on edge enough that he couldn't just lie in bed any longer and by the sound of it he was pacing around his flat. 

"I thought I'd lost you," Dean told him softly. "Then when you came back it was like everything had changed. I didn't think Angels could feel the things you feel. Felt? And now it's all I can think about." 

Cas swore under his breath, obviously giving up on trying to get Dean to shut up, because what was the point? Cas and Dean both knew that he wasn't going to. 

"And that's great," Cas said. "It's added a whole new dimension to our friendship that I didn't realise we could have. But you're continually panicking about it and I truly don't understand why. It's like whenever you're happy, you sabotage everything, before someone else can do it for you."

Dean gave up on being upright and collapsed painfully on the bed, scrubbing his face with the heels of his hands until his eyes hurt and he saw stars. 

"I'm an idiot," Dean declared. 

"Yes."

"It's just that I was sitting there and thinking that when everyone comes over later, you might do something that would give us away. And that can't happen, Cas." 

"Dean, _you_ are the one who is most likely to give us away! You're ridiculously tactile and grabby in front of people for someone who doesn't want anyone to know he likes guys."

"I like _a_ guy. You." 

"Can I ask you something personal?" 

_No._

"I can't guarantee I'll answer, but go ahead," Dean said, against his better judgment. 

"You've slept with men, haven't you? Not just as part of group sex, but alone?" 

Dean felt like the breath had been knocked out of him at Cas' directness. 

"Why?" he eventually croaked. 

"Because you very much don't want anyone to see you as gay, not even Sam, who by the way is rooting for us and has been for years." 

"Sam is… what?" 

"It's fine. He's obviously delusional - he thinks we're this epic love story, destined to defy adversity and live happily ever after," Cas said dismissively. "But if you were worried about his approval, he couldn't have been more obvious about it if he'd arranged a small platter of condoms and lube on your bedside table for us." 

"A small… what? Cas! Stop."

"Can he know you're bisexual? Is it the definition he used that's the issue?" 

"I'm not… I'm…" Dean took a breath and seriously considered just hanging up. "I like sex. That doesn't need a label." 

"I agree - you don't have to label yourself if you don't want to. But your anger towards your brother when he said-" 

"I know what he said! Look, where I come from, the upbringing I had-" Dean covered his face with his hands, dropping the phone to his pillow to take several deep, calming breaths. After a moment he picked the phone back up, and put it back to his ear to find Cas patiently waiting for him. 

"Do you know what happened to me the first time my dad caught me with a guy?" Dean asked. His voice sounded strange, like it wasn't his. Maybe that was a good thing? Maybe he could pretend none of this was him.

"No, but I'm here to listen if you want to talk about it," came the gentle voice of the Angel who never judged him, who always supported him. If he could talk to anyone, it would be Cas wouldn't it? 

"Josh was this… he was great. He was a year older than me, a little less shy about things. He knew nothing about hunting, but he thought I was a Goddamned superhero." 

Dean swallowed down the lump in his throat and tried to calm himself by listening to the rustling sounds of Cas moving around his apartment. 

"He worked as a waiter at this diner we used to eat at with dad. He wanted to surprise me for my birthday, so the night before, he turned up in his wreck of a car with sandwiches, homemade cake and beer." 

"We'd kissed before, but that was the night we were going to-" 

Dean took a breath. 

"It didn't seem wrong. It didn't feel wrong. We weren't in love or any shit like that, but he was the first person I'd been close to in a couple of years. We kept it quiet, because I knew how my dad felt. He'd guessed Josh was gay - he called him so many fucking names whenever he was out of earshot. So I knew. I should have known. It was my fault." 

Dean hated this. He hated himself. 

"When my dad caught us, he didn't beat me. I could have taken that. I was used to that. But my dad… he beat Josh until he was _screaming_ and begging me to help him. His face was such a fucking mess - blood bubbling out of his fucking nose. My dad didn't need to go for his face like he did - wanted to spoil his pretty boy looks, he said."

Dean had tried to hide his own looks after that. He knew he was good looking, pretty almost, and he'd hated it for a long time. 

"I'm so sorry," Cas whispered. 

"He said I'd caused it all, that I was weak and selfish, that if I'd kept control of my _urges_ that none of this would have happened."

"You know that's not true," Cas said softly. 

"I swear I did try to help him," Dean said earnestly. He needed Cas to understand that he didn't just give up and let it happen. "I pulled at dad's arms, I shouted, I even pulled a gun on him in the end. But he knew I wouldn't dare use it on him. Fucking coward that I was. _Am_." 

"My dad insisted we went into the diner for a birthday celebration the next day. Josh was there, his face black and blue and he couldn't look at me. I didn't blame him either - I couldn't look at myself." 

"That night my dad sent me on my first solo hunt. I truly thought he was sending me away to die, that I'd let him down so much that he didn't want me to even exist anymore." 

Dean remembered saying goodbye to Sammy, thinking it was the last time he'd ever see him, pulling him in for a hug and trying not to let Sam see the tears. He'd been so loyal to his dad, that he would have walked headfirst into his own messy end rather than say no to him. 

"I was prepared for the ghosts to kill me, and dad wouldn't tell me anything about what I was walking into. He said it was a test, but that wasn't why he sent me. He sent me because the ghosts I had to end, the nuns, they were in love with each other."

Cas swore and Dean held the phone tighter, like he could pretend he was somehow clinging to Cas instead. 

"They'd killed themselves because they were gay and in love, and that wasn't allowed. The pain of it, the guilt, the judgement, never being able to be happy together - they couldn't live like that. I nearly _let_ them kill me, instead of ending them."

"Cas?" He asked, needing to hear his voice, to know he was still there. 

"I'm here, Dean." 

That was all he needed. 

"My dad actually apologised for beating Josh. He's good at apologising afterwards. _It was the drink, Dean. I'd had one too many and I just saw red. You know I've got a temper on me, son._ But he made sure I knew that what I did was just as wrong, that if I couldn't keep my _urges_ in check then I had to make sure no one ever found out about them, especially not Sam."

"Wouldn't want him catching Gay, hey?" he added with fake cheer that rang hollow even to his ears. 

"Dean, I can't imagine what that was like for you," Cas said when Dean paused for longer this time, needing to scrub the unfallen tears from his eyes. "But you know your dad was wrong, don't you? He was wrong about so many things, but _that_ \- you can see that his prejudice, his reactions are what is disgusting here can't you? Not your sexuality. His reaction was the shameful thing. He is the one who should be beaten black and fucking blue."

The barely suppressed anger made his words come out harshly, but Dean was too distracted by the noises in the background, sounds Dean thought he recognised. 

"Cas, what are you doing?" 

"Locking the car door." 

"I thought you were in bed?"

"And now I'm not." 

Dean sat up in bed, hearing the loud clunk of the Bunker's front door being locked back into place. A minute later Cas was in his doorway, hot, sweaty and out of breath from rushing, still wearing pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt. His hair was mussed, and his collarbone was exposed by the t-shirt that was too big for him. He looked young, blazing with anger and suppressed emotion, and so very human. 

Dean gave him a weak smile. "Hi, Cas. Long time no see."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of my information for this chapter and the next one comes from John Winchester's journal entries, as well as from some of Jensen's own answers to questions about Dean during panels.
> 
> It should go without saying - it should always go without saying, that no one's sexuality is ever something to be ashamed of. Love and/or sex is incredible and awesome in any form it comes in. 


	15. Writing's on the Wall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter has (non-graphic) mentions of past, potentially underage sex-work. It's a bit rough going, but I need to show the depth Dean has - he's not all Baby, women and pie. I promise our boys will get their happy ending.

Cas was trembling with emotion, his body outlined in the light from the hallway as if he were surrounded by a halo of light. Dean's guardian Angel, here to make everything better. 

"I thought we were avoiding being alone together?" Dean asked, hating the needy undertone to his voice that he was fairly sure was none too subtly begging Cas to crawl into his bed. 

"Fuck it," Cas said, still not moving from the doorway. "Fuck all of it."

"I'm such a fucking awful influence on you," Dean pointed out wryly, smiling an actual genuine smile for the first time all night. 

"Yes," Cas agreed. "People have been telling me that since the very first day we met. Personally, I think it's an improvement." 

"You just gonna stand in the doorway all night?"

Cas looked at Dean helplessly, like his feet were glued to the floor. 

"I'm going to do things we'll both regret," he warned. "I have very little control right now." 

"Join the club, buddy." _Join the fucking club._

When Cas still didn't move, Dean pulled back his covers invitingly. 

"C'mere Cas." Dean held out his arms and Cas' resolve broke. He crossed the room in two strides, flinging himself painfully into Dean's waiting embrace. 

Cas hadn't been lying, he really did have no control left. He'd straddled Dean's hips and unceremoniously dropped himself into his lap, his hands cupping Dean's cheeks, cradling his face. Seemingly determined to show Dean how much he wasn't alone in this, he was kissing every single inch of exposed skin that was within his reach. His forehead, his cheeks, the scratchy stubble of his chin, his eyebrows, eyelids, nose, neck - Cas was placing kiss after kiss _everywhere_ , leaving Dean breathless. 

"You," Cas said between kissing his cheek and the corner of his mouth, "are so fucking," he placed a kiss _on_ Dean's lips this time, "incredible." 

Dean had never seen him like this before and it was both overwhelming and such a fucking turn-on to see his Angel without all his steely control so firmly in place.

"Strong." Kiss. "Brave." Kiss. "Beautiful." 

"Alright, Cas," Dean calmed, feeling his cheeks heating in embarrassment at what was possibly the most praise he ever remembered having. 

He curled his fingers around Cas' shoulders and this time when Cas' lips landed on his, Dean kissed back, leaning into it, pulling Cas in deeper. He was torn between feeling overwhelmed and so absolutely cared about, and he didn't know what to do with that. All he knew was that the moment Cas had landed in his lap, the noise in his head had quietened. 

Their chests were pressed together as they kissed long and hard, pent up emotions pouring into the kiss from both sides. Every movement hurt Dean's already bruised and battered ribs, but Dean didn't care. Cas was furious, protective, loving and _everything_ Dean needed him to be. 

"When I get back into Heaven, I'm going to find him and I'm going to personally drag his ass to Hell," Cas growled, breaking the kiss and leaning his forehead against Dean's, breathless. 

"Cas-" 

"If I could still time-travel, I would go back in time to when he was alive and I'd break _both_ of his legs," Cas fantasised out loud.

"Cas, chill. It was all a long time ago." 

"I've smited people for far less, Dean. He shouldn't get away with the things he's done. The very fact that he's even _in_ Heaven at all after what he put you through - it makes my skin crawl."

Dean sighed, pushing Cas back by his shoulders so he could look him in the eye. 

"Alright, I get it. I really fucking get it, Cas. But he's my dad, and mom loves him. Just, don't go asking anyone for any Mafia-style favours, okay?" 

"I'm afraid I can't make any promises."

"Cas, I'm serious. You know how guilty I feel all the time, about _everything._ How do you think I'd feel if I had to live with the fact that I'd sent my own dad to Hell?" 

"Fine," Cas relented. "But this discussion isn't over. There are other measures that can be taken." 

"Fair enough. We'll talk about it some other time, okay?"

Unless you had a parent like John Winchester it was impossible to understand the mix of feelings that came with it. The loyalty warring with guilt, the love warring with hate. Knowing that the things they did were so very wrong, but not being able to stop blaming yourself as well. Cas knew. Cas understood loving someone despite their mistakes better than most.

"I'm sorry for bringing all this to the surface," Cas murmured. He'd pulled Dean to his chest and Dean burrowed his face into Cas' neck, breathing him in and feeling instantly calmer. "I know it's not what you need right now." 

"I was a mess before you even picked up the phone," Dean admitted, his mouth brushing against Cas' neck as he spoke. He let his tongue dart out, tasting Cas' skin for just a moment, but long enough to make the angel's breath catch in his throat.

"It feels good to be able to talk about it. No one else knows, not even Sam. I've never told anyone."

"Well, thank you for trusting me." Cas dropped a kiss on the top of Dean's head, burying his nose in his hair and inhaling deeply. 

"I've had some good experiences with guys too, you know," Dean added. "But I need you to understand, Cas. I can't date a guy, I can't be with a guy. I can't be with you, not in that way."

The comforting hand stroking down Dean's back stopped for a moment, then carried on, but Cas had lifted his head so he wasn't breathing softly into Dean's hair anymore. 

"Sex I can do," Dean soldiered on, even though it was breaking his heart to do it. "Sex is something I've allowed myself. Just not… not the rest."

"I never thought you _would_ be with me." Cas' words were unemotional, steady, his control instantly back in place. Dean couldn't read him now and for some reason it made his heart clench in his chest. 

Any moment now, Cas would get off his lap and leave him. He should. He absolutely fucking should. Dean would tell him to, if he wasn't such an abject coward, if he wasn't so selfish that he was hanging on to every second he had left of having Cas in his arms. 

"It's not just that I'll have to face my dad again. It's not even that part of me wants the wife, the house, the kids and barbecues in the backyard, because I can't have that either way. I can't be with _anyone, Cas._ I'm done. That isn't something I get to have now."

"Dean-" 

"I know it doesn't sound good, Cas. I know what it makes me sound like and I'm so fucking sorry. I'm not trying to use you." 

"It makes you sound like a man who has been hurt so many times that he's too terrified to open his heart to anyone again," Cas murmured, his voice soothing as he stroked his palms down Dean's arms. "It makes you sound like a man who is afraid of his father's judgement, afraid of someone he looked up to so much, tearing him down for who he is."

Dean shook his head. "Don't make excuses for me. I know what a hypocritical asshole I am. I know I use people for sex, that I-" 

"I haven't known you use people for sex for years. And even before that, it seemed to be quite mutual. I'm not judging you for your sexuality Dean, whatever it is that you define it as, or not - the people you have sex with are all consenting adults." 

"Stop, Cas." 

"Stop what?" 

Dean pulled back to glare at him, pushing hard at Cas' chest with his palms to push him away, then pushing harder when that didn't move Cas at all. 

"I want to use you for sex, Cas," Dean bit out. "Do you understand that? You're okay with that, right? An Angel of the Lord, used for a quick fuck. That okay with you?" 

Dean shoved Cas again, hard enough to hurt. 

"Still feel like I'm a good guy?" he challenged furiously. He wanted to throw things, hit things, break things. He wanted to destroy everything around him, because he didn't deserve any of it. Not one fucking bit of it. 

He caught hold of Cas' face between his hands roughly, all gentleness gone. 

"I want to fuck you until you can't fucking walk. I want to make you moan my name around my cock." Dean watched Cas' unreadable expression and wanted to shake a reaction from him. Why wasn't he angry? 

"Do you know what will happen then? Do you?" Dean hissed through clenched teeth. "The moment you start to fall for me; the moment you start to feel like this could be something really good - I will pull away. I'll close off. I'll end things with you like you were nothing to me. Because it's what I fucking _do_ , Cas. I'm a monster."

He'd wanted to shock Cas, to make him react, make him run. Instead Cas was staring at him with sympathy on his face. Kindness, sadness, caring. 

"People sleep together all the time for their mutual pleasure and benefit." 

Cas put his hand over Dean's where it was pressed against Cas' chest, holding Cas back from him. "Only you would beat yourself up over it. When you're honest from the start, how does that make you a monster?"

Dean shook Cas' hand off. "Would you stop trying to make me feel better." This time Dean slammed his palms against Cas' shoulders instead. "I don't want to feel better, I want to hurt, Cas. I _am_ a monster - for once, would you just treat me like one." 

Finally having had enough and without warning, Cas pushed himself up onto his knees and caught Dean's wrists deftly in his hands. Forcing them over his head, he pinned them against the top of the headboard, using his weight to hold them in place. 

"Fucking let go!" Dean shouted, struggling. 

"I would give you almost anything you asked for," Cas ground out as Dean violently thrashed in an effort to get his hands back, suspecting strongly that Cas was using his Grace to add to his strength. "But I will never, ever treat you like a monster, because you're not one, Dean."

"You don't know even half the things I've done! The people I've hurt. The ones I've screwed over just because I could. I've tortured and done things, and some of them I even fucking _enjoyed_ , Cas."

"You're throwing all this at me like it's a weapon," Cas pointed out with infuriating calm. "Do you think I don't know you, Dean? Do you think anything you can say will change how I see you?" 

"Do you know what it was like for me growing up? How damn lonely it was every single day? Hick town, after hick town, after fucking hick town. Never making friends, because any guys I so much as said hello to, my dad would look at me like I was going to bend them over the table at any moment."

"So I used my own _pretty boy_ looks to seduce women instead. Dad liked that. He didn't just like it, he was damn proud of me. Then we'd move on to the next town and I'd do it all again because a warm body every night made me feel a little bit less like I was nothing."

Dean had stopped struggling and Cas loosened his grip, looking down at Dean like he didn't know what to do with him, and if Cas didn't know, no-one would. No-one could help him. 

"If I let your hands go, are you going to stop lashing out?" Cas asked. 

Dean ignored Cas' question. Something in him didn't want his hands free, but telling Cas that right now would just add to the shame he already felt coursing through him. 

"I haven't let anyone close since Lisa. I haven't even been tempted! Then you told me you loved me, and now I'm doing all sorts of stupid, selfish shit again."

"I'm equally responsible," Cas said sternly. "Don't turn what happened between us into just another stick to beat yourself with. Don't you fucking _dare_ devalue it like that!" 

Cas was using his gruff, threatening voice that usually turned Dean on no end when they were hunting, but now, with Cas straddling him, holding him down, looking at him like that - it was impossible to ignore what it was doing to him. 

"I don't need any more sticks to beat myself with - I've already got the whole damn tree, Cas." 

Dean pulled his knees up, tilting his hips and sliding down the bed to try to tip Cas forward enough that he wouldn't be able to feel how messed up Dean was, how hard he was even while he spewed self hatred. 

"Alright," Cas muttered, letting go of Dean's wrists and climbing off him entirely. All hope that Dean had of Cas not noticing what state he was in was gone when Cas' thigh accidentally dragged over him as he dismounted. Cas' eyes shot to his, then he quickly looked away. Dean pushed himself back against the headboard, pulling his knees up. His ribs hurt more like this, but maybe that was what he deserved. 

"Do you know what I was always terrified of? What I always worried about?" he asked Cas, looking across to where Cas had sat next to him, leaving a depressingly respectable distance between them. Maybe it had worked. Maybe Cas was giving up on him. It was about time

Cas shook his head mutely. Usually there would have been a pithy comment, a guess, but apparently Cas wasn't in the joking mood. 

"I never knew if you knew, if you'd seen. I mean, I knew you could time travel and you liked me, so why wouldn't you go back and see what I was like as a kid? As a teenager?" 

Dean wanted to lean into Cas, to close the gap and draw comfort from him. But he couldn't. He didn't deserve to. 

"I didn't-" Cas started to deny. 

"Do you know all of the shit I've done? Is there some sort of file up there that you guys can consult?" Dean wrapped his arms tightly around his knees, ignoring the pain, ignoring the cuts pulling open as he moved. He'd heal, physically at least. It was fine. 

"But then if you knew every bad thing I'd done, you wouldn't have told me… you wouldn't have said the things you did when the Empty took you. You wouldn't still be looking at me the way that you do."

Cas frowned, his eyes questioning. 

"Like I'm _good_ and _pure_ and-" 

"-Dean, I'm not sure how you think I see you, but I can tell you that I see you as you _are_. I see your _soul_ , Dean. A person's soul doesn't lie and I've cradled yours in my hands."

Dean knew he was on the edge of something, on the edge of telling Cas something he couldn't take back. His chest felt tight and he struggled to take in a big enough breath to satisfy his desperate need for oxygen. He was feeling light headed, dizzy, like he was floating above himself far more than he was present inside his own body. He realised belatedly that he was panicking.

"I've done so many things," he said, ignoring the tightness and trying to take in a deep breath. He felt sick. He couldn't do this. 

The touch against his hand was so light that Dean didn't notice it at first. Cas' hand was sliding slowly, tentatively into his, linking their fingers before Dean realised what he was doing. 

Their eyes met and Cas looked at him with such empathy, such caring and kindness that tears pricked at the back of Dean's eyes. 

"Stop," Dean demanded, his voice hoarse. "Stop looking at me like I'm something I'm not. I've done things to people, with people." 

Despite his words, Dean's hand closed tightly around Cas' fingers, holding on as if Cas was his only anchor to the world. He closed his eyes. 

"For money, Cas. I did things for money. To pay the motel bills, to feed Sammy. I-" Dean's voice cracked, his throat closing as a wave of emotion poured through him until it was visible on his face. 

"All those things my dad told me to be ashamed of? I did them and more, and I got paid for doing them. I was a _whore_ , Cas. Do you understand? A fucking whore. I let people touch me, I sucked men off in alleyways outside bars, went back to sleazy motel rooms with women who were more than twice my age."

Silently, Cas' pulled their clasped hands to his mouth, kissing Dean's knuckles gently, reverently, like the words Dean was saying didn't disgust him, like they truly didn't make him look at Dean any differently.

"Dad would leave us in Motel rooms that were paid up for the week, and he'd fuck off for three, four weeks at a time. I had to find money to pay for it, or Sammy would have been sleeping on park benches. I didn't want to do any of it. I swear to you, Cas. I didn't."

_Please believe me._

"I know, Dean," Cas murmured against his knuckles. "I promise, I know." 

"We were so damn broke," Dean couldn't stop the words bubbling up and out of his mouth. Now he'd started, he couldn't stop. "Stealing got me caught, poker games and pool didn't always go my way. Sammy was a teenager at that point and hungry all the frickin' time. I didn't know what else to do."

"You don't have to explain, Dean. You did what you did to survive."

"It wasn't about _my_ survival." Dean swiped at his eyes angrily with his free hand, refusing to cry. "I could have found a place, or slept rough. But not Sam. He needed a roof over his head. He needed to be fed. He needed something stable in our fucked up, crappy lives." 

"You were protecting Sam. You've always protected Sam." Cas had moved closer, his shoulder brushing against Dean's. 

Dean swiped at the hot tears that spilled silently down his cheeks, angry at them for daring to fall, and when Cas wrapped his arm around him and pulled him into his side, Dean let him, burrowing his face into Cas' neck. When was the last time he'd been held while he cried? He could barely remember if his mom had held him. He didn't remember ever being truly comforted. 

"There were more men out there who would pay for a fuck than there were women. I wasn't above turning a trick if it meant Sam could have a hot meal that night. I was… I was good at it. Repeat customers some of the time. It was-" 

Dean felt his face crumpling, his breath coming fast. He was splintering apart, into tiny pieces that no one would be able to put back together again. But even as the panic surged through him like an unstoppable tidal wave, Dean felt Cas' fingers in his hair, stroking, calming, gentle and reassuring. 

"I would come back to our room with food for Sammy and I'd shower until the hot water ran out. Then we'd watch comedies on the shitty motel TV and I'd tell Sam all about the poker game I'd won, or the pool game I'd hustled. It was like it had never happened. It's still like it never happened."

"Dean," Cas murmured into his hair. "I had no idea. You should never have had to do any of that. No one should. Your father - did he know?" 

"Dad knew that I was paying bills without having any money. He just didn't bother to ask how." 

"So, ironically," Dean said with false cheer that fell spectacularly flat, "my dad was actually responsible for a good third of the men I screwed. If he'd have left us enough money to live on while he was gone I wouldn't have needed to do any of it." 

Dean had run out of steam, run out of new reasons for Cas to run from him. He surely had enough now, right? 

But instead of running from him, Cas had pulled Dean even further into his arms, so Dean was laying on his unbruised side. They'd been slowly sinking down until they were almost completely laying down on the bed, and Cas' arms were so tightly wrapped around him that it was hurting him to breathe as every breath put pressure on his bruised ribs. 

"Do you see why you can't want me, Cas?" Dean whispered into his neck. "Do you understand why you shouldn't let me anywhere near you?" 

Cas dropped kisses on the top of Dean's head, then leaned back so he could drop them on his forehead, his wet cheeks, the tip of his nose, then finally his mouth. 

"You were abandoned by your family, let down, beaten down and _still_ everything you did was for your brother." Cas leaned down to kiss him again and this time Dean kissed him back until they were clinging on to each other, hips moving together instinctively. 

"Cas," Dean whispered his name reverently, like his name was a prayer all by itself. He kissed him again, so very slowly, pouring every bit of gratitude he felt into that one kiss - everything he couldn't say, could _never_ say. 

"Do you understand? " Cas asked softly, breaking their kiss. "That nothing will _ever_ change how I see you? How I feel about you?" 

Dean's eyes shot open, his heart stuttering in his chest. He started to shake his head in denial, to tell Cas not to say it, that he couldn't feel that way, not now that he knew everything.

"Don't," Dean shook his head, a lump in his throat. 

"Stop," Cas demanded gently, caressing Dean's cheekbone with his thumb. "Stop thinking of reasons I shouldn't. I do. I always will. That won't change. Whatever you think you've done that's irredeemable, I see you. I see everything you've done. I can see your soul and it's _good,_ it's _beautiful_. I can see everything you've done and I love you, Dean."

Dean gulped in desperate breaths of air. He wasn't just crying anymore, he was sobbing big, ugly sobs with his entire body. Helpless to stop them, unable to even explain them, he let Cas hold him while he fell apart. He was dimly aware of Sam's voice coming from the doorway, but he didn't look up and the mumble of Cas' response vibrated through him, comforting him even though he couldn't make out the words for the pounding in his ears and the chant that filled his own head. 

_Cas loves me. Cas loves me. Cas loves me._

Even after everything that happened, he still loved him. Dean knew he should want to run. It should terrify him completely, but for the first time in his life, he had love with no expectations, no responsibility to fulfil in return. He was just loved. It was that simple. 

Cas held him while he fell apart, keeping him safe, letting him feel loved and safe enough to finally break. What could have been minutes or hours later, Dean's eyes were drying and he was calming down enough to be aware that Cas was murmuring complete nonsense into his hair. 

"Is that Enochian?" Dean asked, his voice still rough. 

Cas didn't answer, but he pulled back to reach out for Dean's glass of water. 

"Here, drink this," he said, holding it out to him. 

Dean took it, downing half of it before putting it back down. He eyed the large dark patch on Cas' t-shirt, horribly aware that it was his tears that had made it so damp. 

"I'm sorry," Dean whispered, burrowing back into Cas' chest. He wasn't even sure what he was sorry for. For the t-shirt? For pushing him away? For not being able to say he loved him back? For making Cas love such a screw-up? 

"No," Cas kept sliding his hands through Dean's hair. "We've talked about this. No more being sorry for things we can't help." 

"I don't deserve you," Dean breathed, his words muffled against Cas' damp t-shirt. It smelled of fresh laundry detergent, citrus and some sort of spice. It was comforting and sexy all at the same time. 

"You're not a very good judge of what you deserve," Cas informed him, trailing fingers down his arm absently.

"We've gotta get up soon," Dean groaned. He didn't want to. He wasn't sure he could face today. 

"Yes. If you don't mind, I'll stay here now. There's not much point going back to the apartment." 

"In my bed?" Dean held his breath. 

"Is that what you want?" 

"Yes." _More than anything._ "If that's what _you_ want?" 

Cas smiled into his hair. "It's what I want."

"Cas, what I said before - you know I didn't mean it? I don't know why I lash out the way I do, but you mean more than-" Dean paused, pleading with his brain to give him the right way to word it. 

"You're my best friend, man. I'm so fucking grateful for you," he finished, holding Cas' gaze, trying to make him see how much he meant it. 

"I know," Cas nodded. "I understand." But Dean truly couldn't tell whether he did or not.

"Alright."

"Hey." Cas turned Dean's face to his, his hand sliding down Dean's chest, his voice a low rumble. "It's okay. Let me help you empty that mind of yours." 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sex-work holds far too much stigma in our society. When chosen freely, sex-work is just work, just as valid as anyone else's job. What Dean was driven to do in this chapter is not the same thing.
> 
> I need a hug now 😭


End file.
